the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Global Supply Chain Stress Index (GSCPI) for February 2023 shows that the global supply chain has not yet fully returned to its pre-pandemic normal. While supply chain bottlenecks are being resolved, various other data sources indicate that global supply chains have been affected by the epidemic, including labor shortages, supply chain disruptions and logistics bottlenecks, which have not yet returned to pre-neo-epidemic levels, that the problem is still more common than before the pandemic, and that a return to pre-pandemic normality may take longer and more effort.
first evidence is from the Bank of Canada Quarterly Business Outlook Survey. The survey sample is a representative Canadian company. Although GSPCI began to show a significant relief in the third quarter of 2022, the Bank of Canada's index did not begin to show a significant relief until the fourth quarter of 2022. In the fourth quarter of 2022, 22% of the companies in the BOC's supply chain bottleneck index still mentioned supply chain bottlenecks, which indicates that we have not returned to the bottleneck level before the new crown epidemic.
The second piece of evidence is a series of monthly business outlook surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia on the manufacturing industry starting in 2022, asking about the extent to which capacity utilization is affected by various factors, including supply chain bottlenecks. According to the survey conducted in December last year, about 45% of the respondents believed that the supply chain had moderately or significantly limited the utilization rate of production capacity, which was significantly lower than the corresponding statistics of 68.2% in September. In contrast, the statistics for June were 72.1%, while in March 2022, 85.4% of respondents said that supply chain bottlenecks were moderate or significantly affecting capacity utilization. The data indicate that the bottleneck is easing, but has not yet returned to pre-epidemic levels.
the third set of data, the Census Bureau's quarterly survey of plant capacity utilization, showed that the shortage of material supply affected its capacity utilization rate, indicating that the interruption eased but did not return to normal. As shown in the chart, while the problem improved in the third quarter of 2022, it was cited about three times more frequently than before the new crown outbreak. The fourth quarter of 2022 has improved, but is still below covid-19 levels.
supply chain bottlenecks are easing for transport suppliers, the problem has not yet returned to pre-epidemic levels. According to the non-seasonal adjustment data of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of transportation and storage jobs in the United States decreased by 84300 in February from January. In February, the layoffs in the truck and storage industries were relatively small, with 10600 and 5100 people leaving in the truck and storage industries respectively. However, the number of employees in the truck and storage industries increased by 2.2% and 0.7% respectively over the same period last year. Trucking companies are reducing hiring and letting some truckers and other workers leave, whether through temporary furloughs or layoffs. It is also a sign of widening divisions between the physical goods and services sectors of the U.S. economy. Similarly, if the freight market improves, they can quickly get drivers and other employees back. Even if they may face fierce competition for workers in other industries, including construction.
Forwardernet.com