February was the first month of growth in durable goods new orders since July 2019 and the fastest rate of growth since January 2019.
During the week of March 30th, Gardner Intelligence’s COVID-19 survey showed that changes experienced by manufacturers stabilized while the severity of changes and adjustments lessened. And, there was a small but notable shift in manufacturers serving the medical industry.
An overview of manufacturing business conditions for March 2020, including COVID-19's effect on manufacturing.
As businesses worldwide are forced to close due to COVID-19, manufacturers on the whole face a challenging near-term environment. Custom processors and additive manufacturers reported relatively better conditions in March as compared to their peers in other manufacturing processes. This may have been potentially due to their immediate ability to manufacture the goods necessary in the fight against COVID-19.
For the third month in a row, durable goods spending grew faster than 7%.
After falling below 2% in December 2019, the one month rate of growth grew 2.2% for the second consecutive month.
As automotive OEMs closed facilities and states closed non-essential businesses, significantly more manufacturers made adjustments to production/capacity in last week’s survey.
Month-over-month housing permits grew faster than 12% for the fifth time in six months but will likely slow significantly due to COVID-19.
January cutting tool orders were $196.5 million, which were down 9.8% compared with one year ago.
A growing money supply tends to correlate with increases in capital equipment consumption.
In the third week of the of the COVID-19 survey, manufacturers started making more significant adjustments to contingency plans, budgets/spending, and staffing/hiring. However, production and capacity were relatively unchanged.
January’s unit orders were the lowest since January 2017. Orders for the month contracted 30.3% compared with year ago.
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