b"seL ler's marketKey industry sectors are experiencing strong demand so strong that hamstrung manufacturers often cant keep up.By William LeventonT he automotive, aerospace and automation indus-tries are bellwethers of the U.S. economy. Today, the good news for companies in these industries is that customers want what theyre selling. In many cases, however, thats a mixed blessing because of persistent problems that are keeping manufacturers from fully meet-ing customer demand.Consider the automotive industry. Despite macroeco-nomic headwinds, such as high inflation and rising interest rates, the industry isnt suffering from a lack of demand. Instead, the difficulties are factors that have been con-straining production.Its been one thing after another, from COVID in 2020 and then the semiconductor shortage beginning in 2021 and still lingering today, said Eric Anderson, principal re-search analyst at S&P Global Mobility in Southfield, Mich-igan, the automotive division of New York City-based S&P Global Inc., a provider of financial information and analyt-ics. We believe that through 2023, semiconductor flow will still determine what vehicle production is throughout North America and globally.For now, he thinks that whatever number of vehicles manufacturers can produce will be sold due to pent-up demand on both the retail and fleet sides. For the past two years, he reports that North American production has been 13 million units, several million shy of normal output.Around the third quarter of last year was the most ex-treme amount of downtime and shutdowns we have seen for North America, Anderson said. But each quarter over quarter, the semiconductor flow tends to improve a bit.For 2022, he expects North American production to be about 14.6 million units, nearly a 12% increase over last years figure, with production in the back half of the year exceeding that in the first half. Next year, he estimates that production probably will increase to 15.5 million units despite continued constraints due to semiconductor flow.With semiconductors in short supply, Anderson said original equipment manufacturers have been diverting ctemag.com/cteguide.com13Yearend.indd 13 11/15/22 12:02 PM"