Durable Goods Orders MoM

Durable Goods Orders MoM is the advance durable-goods cut of the M3 survey (Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories and Orders). The Census Bureau, an agency of the US Department of Commerce, has run it monthly since 1957. It covers US factories with $500 million or more in annual shipments, about 3,000 companies across 89 industry categories. It tracks shipments, new orders net of cancellations, backlog (unfilled orders) and inventories in nominal dollars, durables only, excluding services, retail, imports and exports.

Responses cover activities during the calendar month, gathered by email plus reminder and phone follow-up, with gaps imputed (estimated) from trends. Advance arrives about 18 working days after the month at 8:30 AM ET; the full report arrives about 23 working days after at 10:00 AM. Each release prints shipments, backlog, inventories and ex-transportation (volatile aircraft and vehicles stripped out) and ex-defense cuts, and revises the prior month for late receipts. The full report revises the advance, history is revised yearly, and orders signal future production commitments used for GDP (total output) and policy work.

Moves come from a few large categories, with aircraft orders often deciding the headline.

• Excluding transportation: the core read that strips volatile aircraft and motor vehicle orders.
• Excluding defense: strips lumpy military aircraft, ships and ordnance (weapons) orders.
• Transportation equipment: the swing factor covering motor vehicles, aircraft and ships, where cancellations can outweigh bookings.
• Nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft: the closest read on business equipment investment.
• Machinery and tech hardware: demand for farm, construction, mining and industrial equipment, plus electronic products whose orders exclude semiconductors.
• Other durables: primary metals, fabricated metal products, electrical equipment and miscellaneous durables such as furniture.

In the July 2024 report (released August 26, 2024) new orders rose $26.1 billion or 9.9% to $289.6 billion, after a 6.9% June drop. Excluding transportation they fell 0.2%, while excluding defense they rose 10.4%, as shipments rose 1.1% and unfilled orders reached $1,386.5 billion. Transportation equipment added $26.4 billion or 34.8% to $102.2 billion, more than the full headline gain. The same tables showed nondefense aircraft orders of minus $4.2 billion in June 2024, since cancellations exceeded bookings.

1. Link-relative estimation: the prior month universe (full population) estimate is multiplied by the change ratio from reporters present in both months. Firms with extreme jumps are dropped from the ratio but kept in the level, so gaps follow the industry trend.
2. New orders derivation: new orders equal shipments plus the change in unfilled orders. This counts orders received and filled within the same month and subtracts cancellations, so orders can print negative. Only binding documents count, and industries with mostly immediate deliveries are excluded.
3. Seasonal adjustment: X-13ARIMA-SEATS (the statistical seasonal filter) removes predictable calendar effects by dividing values by concurrent (monthly updated) factors. Adjusted new orders are derived from adjusted shipments plus the adjusted backlog change, with no price adjustment.
4. MoM percent change: the headline equals 100 times the seasonally adjusted dollar change divided by the prior level. For example, 100 times (289.6 minus 263.6) divided by 263.6 equals 9.9%.