Machine tool orders dropped in April to their lowest level in more than two years, AMT—The Association for Manufacturing Technology said today.
Orders for the month totaled $336.7 million, McLean, Va.-based AMT said. That was down 39% from an adjusted $549.6 million in March and 34% from $513 million in April 2022. The April figure was the lowest since January 2021.
For the first four months, orders totaled $1.71 billion, down 14% from the same period a year earlier.
“The momentum of order activity is clearly not as strong through the second quarter as it was last year,” Douglas K. Woods, president of AMT, said in a statement.
Job shops posted a monthly decline in orders of almost 39%, AMT said. It was the largest monthly fall since January 2017. The auto industry also cut back on machine tool orders, according to AMT.
The organization cited the economy for the results.
“Consistently high interest rates, ongoing inflation, and the looming threat of a recession have caused businesses to rethink their capital investment strategies,” Woods said. “Job shops, which are the largest consumers of manufacturing technology, are mostly small and medium-sized businesses” that are “particularly affected by price and interest rate pressures.”
The Federal Reserve has increased interest rates to cool the economy to reduce inflation. The Institute for Supply Management said June 1 uncertainty whether the economy will go into recession has affected the manufacturing sector.
The machine tool information comes from companies participating in AMT’s U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) program.
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