U.S., Canadian Service Center Shipments Continue To Fall

Connecting the Dots monitors all major economic announcements in the United States and Canada, but the Metals Service Center Institute also offers industrial metals industry-specific data products that provide much deeper analysis and insight. Visit MSCI’s website and click on industry data to learn more about our Metals Activity Report (MAR), Momentum Monitors, and Macroeconomic Current.

Meanwhile, here are the major economic headlines from the last week:

• MSCI’s MAR for May 2025 showed a modest decline in U.S. service center steel shipments, while aluminum continued to trend downward. Specifically, seasonally adjusted steel shipments in the United States fell 0.6 percent between May 2024 and May 2025 while aluminum shipments declined 7.9 percent. In Canada, the downturn deepened significantly, with steel shipments plunging 18.6 percent and aluminum shipments falling 20.5 percent year-over-year. Those figures continued a multi-month trend of notable contraction in Canadian service center activity.
• U.S. Industrial production fell 0.2 percent in May after rising 0.1 percent in April. Manufacturing output increased 0.1 percent due mostly to a gain of 4.9 percent in the motor vehicles and parts index. The index for mining increased 0.1 percent while the index for utilities fell 2.9 percent. At 103.6 percent of its 2017 average, total industrial production in May was 0.6 percent above its level from a year earlier. Capacity utilization fell to 77.4 percent, a rate that is 2.2 percentage points below its long-run average, which represents data from 1972 to 2024.
• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s manufacturing index for its region fell seven points to -16.0 for June. New orders and shipments declined while inventories were little changed. Employment expanded slightly for the first time in several months, and the average workweek held steady. Another bright spot: firms turned optimistic about the outlook, with the future general business conditions index rising above zero for the first time since March 2025. Read the full report at this link. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s reading for New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania remained slightly negative, but unchanged, from May. The new orders index fell, but remained positive, while the shipments index improved, moving into positive territory. The employment index fell to its lowest value since May 2020, however, and the survey’s future indicators suggested less widespread expectations for growth over the next six months. Read that full report at this link.
• The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits for the first time ever was 245,000 during the week that ended June 14. That number was down by 5,000 from the week before. Averaged over the past four weeks, the number of first-time claims was 245,500, an increase of 4,750 from the previous week. In all, nearly 1.945 million people claimed federal unemployment benefits during the week that ended June 7. That figure was down by 5,000 from the week before.
• In other economic news: U.S. import prices were unchanged in May while prices for U.S. exports declined 0.9 percent; the number of new homes under construction fell 9.8 percent from April 2025 to May 2025 and 4.6 percent from May 2024 to May 2025; and the Conference Board Leading Economic Index for the United States fell 0.1 percent in May 2025 after declining by 1.4 percent in April.