The Economy

Oil Prices Seen Damping U.S. Manufacturing In 2005 And 2006

Aug. 16, 2005

"High energy prices will have a depressing impact on petrochemical, metals, and other energy-intensive industries and will contribute to the deceleration of manufacturing production this year and next," says Daniel J. Meckstroth, chief economist for the ...

John McClenahen

Indeed, some slowing started showing up in July, when factory output grew just one-tenth of a percentage point, compared with four-tenths growth in the two previous months, the Federal Reserve reported on August 16. Capacity utilization among manufacturers last month was 78.3%, the same as the revised figure for June.

Overall U.S. industrial production, which includes mining and utilities in addition to manufacturing, grew a tenth-percent in July, with mining output dropping 1.3% from June and utility output increasing seven-tenths of a percent.

Meanwhile, the much-talked-about U.S. housing bubble did not burst in July. But, as measured by housing starts, it became slightly smaller.

Starts of privately-owned housing were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.042 million last month, one tenth of a percentage point below the revised June rate of 2.045 million, the U.S. Commerce Department and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development jointly reported on August 16.

In July, starts of single-family housing were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.711 million, half a percentage point higher than June's rate of 1.703 million. Starts for multi-family housing, buildings with five or more units, was at a rate of 289,000, down 5.6% from June's rate of 306,000.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.