up, which handily outstripped Wall Street's expectations for a 0.4 percent rise, led producers to tap 79.2 percent of their productive capacity, the most since January 2001, shortly before the economy fell into recession. Analysts had expected a figure of just 78.9 percent. The gain in production was broad-based. Manufacturing output rose 0.7 percent, with production of both long-lasting goods like autos and shorter-lived products moving up. Utilities raised production by 2.7 percent, while mining output climbed 0.4 percent. Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York, said the report suggested U.S. business productivity was still registering healthy gains, since the number of hours workers put in on the job last month had barely budged. --more 1928 Local Time 1628 GMT
