Manufacturing is a

hurting a little bit.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Benashore, and for David Brancaccio.

We got a snapshot of the manufacturing economy this week,

and it was a little disappointing.

Industrial production is a measure of

what's being produced in manufacturing, mining, and utilities and it fell in January.

Economists were expecting an increase and December's figure was revised down.

So why might this be?

Well, bad weather can actually do that and interest rates are high which slows a lot of things down.

But there is at least one bright spot in all this as Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports.

Manufacturing overall fell nearly 1% from January of last year, but high-tech manufacturing of semiconductors and circuit boards rose by more than 20%.

No, it's not a blip.

Mark Zandy at Moody's Analytics says demand for chips is booming booming starting with the auto industry.

Production is steadily rising globally and of course then there's AI.

Meanwhile the feds are spending tens of billions to build new chip factories, most of which aren't producing

yet, says Ned Hill at Ohio State University's Manufacturing Institute.

These are very large complicated plants to design and build.

There's also a long lead time to buy the equipment,

so these plants are going to roll out over a two to five year period.

Now this alone won't jumpstart U.S manufacturing.

Semiconductors make up less than half a percent of GDP, says Paul Ashworth at capital

...