US industrial production up 0.4%

U.S. industrial production, an indicator of the output of mines, factories and utilities, rose 0.4 percent in August, the best performance in six months, the Federal Reserve reported on Monday. Manufacturing output, the largest component of the overall industrial production, increased 0.7 percent in August. It followed a decline of 0.4 percent in July. Outside manufacturing, the output of mining sector moved up 0.3 percent, but the output of utilities dropped 1.5 percent. The overall industrial capacity utilization, a key measure of efficiency, edged up by 0.2 percentage point to 77.8 percent in August, still 2.4 percentage points below its average from 1972 to 2012.