Industrial production increased 1.3% in October after a downwardly revised decline of 3.7% in September, the Federal Reserve reported. The revision to September output resulted, in part, from a larger estimate of the impact of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike on the chemical industry.
 
Manufacturing production, which dropped 3.7% in September, rose 0.6% in October. The output of mines advanced 6.1%, as most crude oil and natural gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico were brought back online after the hurricanes. The output of utilities rose 0.4%.
 
Industrial production in September and October was substantially affected by the hurricanes and a strike in the commercial aircraft industry. Excluding these special factors, total industrial production is estimated to have fallen around 2/3% in both September and October.
 
The hurricane-related disruptions, which are now estimated to have been larger than previously reported, lowered the change in total industrial production in September about 2-1/2 percentage points, and the return to operation in October of most of the affected facilities boosted the change in output about 2 percentage points.
 
The strike in the commercial aircraft industry reduced industrial production ½ percentage point in September and an additional 0.1 percentage point in October.
 
At 107.3% of its 2002 average, total industrial production in October was 4.1% below its level of a year earlier. The capacity utilization rate for total industry rose to 76.4% in October, a level 4.6 percentage points below its average level from 1972 to 2007.

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