Jan 16 -- The Census Bureau invites comments by March 18, 2024 regarding the proposed extension of the Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization.
The Census Bureau plans to request an extension of the current OMB clearance for the Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization (SPC). The SPC is conducted quarterly, collecting from manufacturing plants and publishers, the value of actual production, the value of production that could have been achieved if operating at “full production” levels, and the value of production that could have been achieved if operating at “national emergency” levels. The survey also collects data on work patterns by shift. These data include hours in operation, production workers, and plant hours worked.
The primary sponsors of this collection and users of these data are the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The FRB uses these data in several ways:
-- First, the capital workweek data is used as an indicator of capital use in the estimation of monthly output (industrial production).
-- Second, the workweek data is used to improve the projections of labor productivity that are used to align industrial production (IP) with comprehensive benchmark information in the Manufacturing Sector of the Economic Census and the Annual Integrated Economic Survey.
-- Third, the utilization rate data assists in the assessment of recent changes in IP, as most of the high-frequency movement in utilization rates reflect production changes rather than capacity changes.
-- Fourth, the time series of utilization rate data for each industry, in combination with the FRB IP data, is used to estimate current and historical measures of capacity consistent with the FRB production measures. The DLA uses these data to assess readiness to meet demand for goods under selected national emergency scenarios.
Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization:
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/qpc.html
Current survey instrument and technical documentation:
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=202209-0607-004
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-00619
