New orders for metal cutting, forming and fabricating machinery (manufacturing technology) totaled $435.7 million in March 2024, jumping nearly 25% from February, according to the Association for Manufacturing Technology.

AMT’s monthly U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) report showed noted that March orders are typically a large increase from February, as many builders of manufacturing technology end their fiscal year in March.

Year-over-year, March orders were down 21.3%. Year-to-date, orders were down 18.6% through the first three months of the year compared to the same period in 2023.

The March USMTO report also shared the following:

• Orders from contract machine shops increased in March 2024 to their highest level in the last year. Despite this increase, average monthly orders from contract machine shops were 11.3% lower in March 2024 than in 2023. AMT: “Customers ordering parts from contract machine shops have increasingly turned away from longer-term procurement cycles in favor of placing month-by-month orders or making sporadic, one-off purchases. As a result, machine shops have been hesitant to make additional machinery investments.”
• Electrical generation and power transmission equipment manufacturers helped drive the increase in orders from February to March 2024, which reached their highest level since March 2023. AMT: “Orders from this sector had been on an upward trend since September 2023 because of government investment in new energy technologies. This sector is positioned to become a reliable source of growth in the future from the increasing need for energy as our economy becomes more digitalized and AI begins to play a larger role in daily life.”
• Bucking the national trend, both the Southeast and West regions showed growth in manufacturing technology orders in the year’s first quarter compared to 2023. AMT: “Orders in the Southeast were driven by a massive increase in orders from the aerospace sector as military investment in projects increased in recent months, and some manufacturers relocated from states with less favorable business environments. Growth in the West was driven by orders from computer and electrical equipment manufacturers as government and private investment in semiconductor manufacturing comes online.”