McLEAN, Va. — New orders of metalworking machinery, measured by the U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders Report published by AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology, totaled $593.6 million in April 2026. This was a 12.5% decline from a surprisingly strong March 2026, but a 33.2% increase from April 2025. Over the first four months of 2026, manufacturing technology orders totaled $2.19 billion, a 28.9% increase over 2025.
While the value of machinery is showing strong growth, the number of units sold continues to grow at a slower pace. Average order values increased faster than inflation since the end of the 2020 pandemic recession. The gap between average order value growth and machine tool inflation has widened in the first few months of 2026, indicating that, although some pricing pressures persist across the industry, a significant portion of the order value growth is due to additional automation being added to orders of increasingly sophisticated machinery.
Contract machine shops have generally fallen behind the market in recent years, with orders for manufacturing technology growing more slowly. That trend seems to have reversed in recent months as order growth in 2026 largely matches the market's pace. Aerospace manufacturers increased orders modestly in April 2026; however, for the second time this year, the value of orders increased more slowly than the number of units. This could indicate that aerospace manufacturers are beginning to buy less sophisticated machinery to quickly boost capacity.
The current upswing in demand for manufacturing technology began in September 2024, when interest rates began to decline, heightened political uncertainty began to subside, and IMTS 2024 opened in Chicago. Since then, capacity utilization for machinery manufacturers has steadily trended upward. With order activity already elevated and customer preferences turning toward more sophisticated machinery, the manufacturing technology industry needs to closely monitor capacity constraints to avoid a similar expansion in delivery times to that seen during the order frenzy following the recovery from the COVID-19 recession through IMTS 2022.
