‘Big Ticket’ Item Orders Plunge 10.5% : Economy: November’s decline in demand for durable goods is ‘the final nail in the “no-recession” coffin,’ one analyst says.

Orders to U.S. factories for “big ticket” durable goods plunged 10.5% in November to the lowest level in 2 1/2 years, the government said today.

The decline matched the post-1958 record for one month set in January of this year and indicates that the recession most economists believe started this fall is deepening.

The drop likely is a harbinger of further layoffs at manufacturing plants, where payrolls have shrunk by 800,000 jobs over the last two years--200,000 in November alone.

Order declines were widespread, but were biggest in the transportation and defense industries.

“I think this is the final nail in the ‘no-recession’ coffin. This series had been hanging up there nicely and had been refusing to give ground. It had been one of the things optimists pointed to and now it’s gone,” said Robert Dederick, chief economist at the Northern Trust Co. in Chicago.

“It’s a precipitous decline indicative of a U.S. economy that is ending 1990 on a very harsh note,” said economist Stephen S. Roach of Morgan Stanley & Co. “I think the manufacturing sector right now is in the worst of the recession.”

Overall, orders for durable goods--items from bicycles to battleships and expected to last three or more years--totaled a seasonally adjusted $115.9 billion last month. That was the lowest since May, 1988.

Orders had risen 3.6% in October, but have been down in six of 11 months so far in 1990.

Transportation orders fell 27.4% in November. That included a drop of 38.8% in aircraft and parts, more than offsetting October’s 20.4% increase. Boeing Co. earlier reported new orders of $5.2 billion, down from $10.7 billion a month earlier. Automobile and parts orders also fell.

Excluding the volatile transportation sector, orders fell 3.5% to their lowest levels in two years after edging down 0.2% in October.

New orders for defense equipment dropped 9.6%. Orders excluding defense were also down 9.6%.