Dive Brief:

• Homebuilding isn’t the only industry that got off to a slow start this year. Production among manufacturers was down in February for the third month in a row, the Federal Reserve said this week.

• The two are not unrelated: When fewer homes are under construction, contractors have less of a demand for factory-made building materials, appliances and home products.

• Other contributors to weak factory output are sluggish demand from foreign markets, slow consumer spending, and cutbacks in mining and oil drilling. Plus, like homebuilding, other industries suffered from the impact of unusually cold and snowy winter weather in January and February.

Dive Insight:

Also similar to homebuilding, other industries are predicting a comeback with the spring thaw. “We’re in a soft patch,” Guy Berger, a U.S. economist at RBS Securities in Stamford, Connecticut, told Bloomberg. “The manufacturing sector might perk up a little again. I don’t think too much of this current softness should be extrapolated forward.”