Non Defense Goods Orders Ex Air

Nondefense Capital Goods Orders Excluding Aircraft is a Census Bureau line item in the Advance report on durable goods (long-lived factory goods). It comes from the M3 survey, a monthly survey of US manufacturing establishments running since 1957. It sums new orders (binding documents, net of cancellations) for nondefense equipment, minus nondefense aircraft and parts. Values are nominal dollars (not adjusted for price changes); new orders exclude semiconductors and defense procurement cycles.

Collection covers activity during the calendar reference month: Census emails the panel, reminds nonrespondents, and follows up by telephone. Advance appears about 18 working days after month-end at 8:30 a.m. Eastern; the Full report follows about 23 working days after at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Published alongside are shipments, new orders, unfilled orders (backlog), inventories and capital-goods splits, in seasonally adjusted and unadjusted form.

Advance estimates are subject to late receipts and concurrent seasonal adjustment; corrections enter the next release and older history shifts at annual benchmarking. It signals future production: read month-to-month change in seasonally adjusted nominal dollars; above 0% is growth, under 0.05% is virtually unchanged.

The series sums nondefense equipment demand minus aircraft; defense orders sit in a separate split.

• Heavy and off-highway equipment: small arms and ordnance, farm, construction, mining, oil and gas field machinery.
• Factory machinery: industrial, metalworking, vending, laundry and photographic equipment.
• Power and plant gear: turbines, generators, power transmission, pumps, compressors, material handling and other machinery.
• IT hardware: computers, storage, peripherals and communications equipment; new orders exclude semiconductors.
• Instruments and electrical gear: search and navigation, medical measuring and control instruments plus electrical equipment and appliances.
• Transport, furniture and medical durables: heavy duty trucks, railroad stock, ships and boats, office furniture, medical equipment and supplies.

The January 2024 Advance release, published February 27, 2024, showed why the core exists: headline durable orders fell 6.1% to $276.7B. Transportation equipment led the fall, down 16.2% to $89.8B, while defense capital goods rose 24.2% to $14.0B.

Nondefense capital goods fell 19.4% to $82.7B, while the ex-aircraft core rose 0.1% to $73.720B as shipments rose 0.8% to $74.772B. The lesson: a 19.4% nondefense drop was an aircraft lump, not an investment freeze; headline and core are not interchangeable.

1. Matched-panel link-relative estimation: for each industry, scale the prior universe estimate by the matched panel ratio of companies present in both months. Maverick moves stay out of the ratio but in the level; gaps follow past trends. For example, $100.0B prior shipments with a 1.02 panel ratio gives $102.0B.
2. New-orders derivation: new orders equal shipments plus the change in unfilled orders, net of cancellations and including same-month fills. For example, $102.0B shipments plus a $5.0B unfilled-orders rise gives $107.0B new orders.
3. Seasonal adjustment with X-13ARIMA-SEATS: divide unadjusted shipments, unfilled orders and inventories by concurrent factors. Derive adjusted new orders as adjusted shipments plus the adjusted backlog change. Holiday and trading-day adjustments apply where appropriate; no price adjustment occurs at any step.
4. Aggregation and % change: sum industry estimates to nondefense capital goods, subtract aircraft, then compute 100 x change divided by prior value. For example, $110.0B minus $3.0B aircraft gives $107.0B core.