Monday Morning Optimism: 5/22/23

Improving Car Manufacturing

Welcome to our Monday Morning Optimism series. To start each week, we’ll send you an economic trend/fact/idea that shows how some aspect of the economy (or world) has improved over time.

Motor vehicle assemblies (the number of new cars made) surged to 11.4 million in April, the most in any month since July 2020 and up 13.7% from March. This increase comes after assemblies fell by nearly 7% from October 2022 to March of this year and signals that supply chains—specifically for semiconductors—are improving.

There were more new vehicles sold in April than in any month since May 2021. Throughout the pandemic, there were about 2-3 million fewer vehicles sold per year compared to the late 2010s.  That suggests that there’s a lot of pent up demand from buyers who delayed car purchases due to low inventory levels. As vehicle assembly rates and supply chains improve, it’s very possible that the upward trend in vehicle sales continues even absent lower interest rates.

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