Durable goods orders are up 8% in 2026, and primary metals orders fell once price is taken out

Durable goods orders from US manufacturers totaled $3.01 trillion from January through September 2026, 8.0% more than in the same months of 2025, according to Table 1 of the Census Bureau’s advance durable goods report for September 2026, released Oct. 27, 2026. Census reports orders in dollars, and a note to Table 1 says “Estimates are not adjusted for price changes,” so part of that growth is higher prices on the same tons and units.

We divided each industry’s year-to-date growth in orders by its growth in producer prices to estimate how much of it is volume. Machinery orders are still up about 8.7% after price. Fabricated metal orders are up about 2.3% and electrical equipment orders about 1.7% after price, while primary metals orders, up 16.0% in dollars, are down about 4.0% in volume. If your customers’ orders look strong in dollars, base 2027 pipeline, quotas and budget on the volume figure for your end market and plan for price as its own line, since the primary metals producer price index averaged 20.8% higher in the first nine months of 2026 than a year earlier, and next year’s price change could be smaller or negative.

Industry	Orders, Jan. to Sept. 2026 vs 2025 (dollars)	Producer price change (Jan. to Sept. average)	Orders after price (our estimate)	Shipments (dollars)	Shipments after price (our estimate)
Machinery	+13.4%	+4.3%	+8.7%	+10.8%	+6.2%
Fabricated metal products	+8.8%	+6.3%	+2.3%	+6.9%	+0.5%
Electrical equipment, appliances and components	+6.5%	+4.7%	+1.7%	+5.8%	+1.1%
Primary metals	+16.0%	+20.8%	-4.0%	+14.2%	-5.5%

The table shows year-to-date growth, January to September 2026 versus the same months of 2025, not seasonally adjusted. Dollar columns from Census Table 1. Price change is the average of the nine monthly BLS producer price indexes for each industry, from FRED’s machinery, fabricated metal, electrical equipment and primary metals series, and the price-adjusted columns are our arithmetic.

What did the September durable goods report show?

September on its own was a strong month. Durable goods orders rose $6.3 billion, or 1.8%, to $345.4 billion in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, and they have risen in six of the last seven months, according to the Census advance report. Transportation equipment accounted for most of the gain, rising 4.6% to $119.8 billion, with nondefense aircraft orders up 28.4%. Excluding transportation, orders rose 0.5%.

Orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft, the closest series to the machines and equipment most of our readers sell, rose 0.5% to $88.0 billion. Unfilled orders for all durable goods reached $1,623.6 billion, up in 26 of the last 27 months.

A single month moves with aircraft bookings, so the year-to-date figures are more useful for a supplier’s plan. Nondefense aircraft orders are down 18.0% for the year, while nondefense capital goods orders excluding aircraft are up 10.9% in dollars. Census will publish revised September figures on Nov. 3, 2026, and the October advance report on Nov. 25, 2026.

How much did durable goods orders grow once price is taken out?

For each industry we averaged the BLS producer price index for January through September 2026 and for the same months of 2025. We then divided one plus the growth in dollars by one plus the growth in price, and subtracted one.

Machinery is the one industry where volume growth is clearly strong. Machinery producer prices averaged 4.3% higher than in 2025, which leaves orders up about 8.7% and shipments up about 6.2% in volume. That is consistent with the 36.9% year-to-date rise through August in AMT’s manufacturing technology orders, a narrower measure, reported in our piece on the narrow manufacturing PMI rebound.

Fabricated metal products, the industry most job shops and build-to-print suppliers sit in, had producer prices 6.3% higher on average. Orders are up about 2.3% after price and shipments about 0.5%, so the industry is shipping close to the same volume as in 2025 at higher prices. Electrical equipment looks similar, with prices up 4.7%, orders up about 1.7% and shipments up about 1.1% in volume.

In primary metals, the producer price index averaged 20.8% higher than in the first nine months of 2025, and the September reading of 376.347 was 23.9% above September 2025’s 303.680. Against that, a 16.0% gain in orders works out to about 4.0% less metal ordered, and shipments about 5.5% lower.

Why are primary metals orders up in dollars and down in volume?

Mills have been raising prices, and buyers have been paying to secure supply. In secondary reporting of third-quarter earnings calls, IndustryWeek wrote on Oct. 22, 2026 that Cleveland-Cliffs’ average selling price rose nearly 5% in the quarter. The article quotes CFO Celso Goncalves saying “index pricing in the U.S. has increased by roughly $40 per ton each month for most of this year,” and Chairman and CEO Lourenco Goncalves saying “I believe that steel prices are not at peak.” The same article reports Alcoa CEO Bill Oplinger describing customer interest in “secure supply and long-term agreements.”

Regional survey data point the same way. In the Philadelphia Fed’s October 2026 Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey, released Oct. 15, 2026, the prices received index rose to 40.1, its highest reading since May 2025, while the new orders index fell 25 points to 4.3. The same survey found 52.2% of responding firms expect higher capital spending in 2027 than in 2026, 47.8% expect the same and none expect lower.

How reliable is a price-adjusted estimate like this?

Treat the figures as direction and rough size. A producer price index measures the selling prices producers in an industry receive, while the industry’s orders can carry a different product mix and prices agreed before 2026. We also applied one nine-month average price change to nine months of orders; a month-by-month adjustment would weight the busiest months more, which matters most where prices climbed all year, as in primary metals. The report gives too few unadjusted monthly figures to do that. The Census figures come from a panel of about 4,700 reporting units that, the report says, “is not based on a probability sample,” so its sampling error cannot be measured.

Both sources revise their figures. Census revises the advance figures in its full report, and BLS recalculates every producer price index for up to four months after its first release, so the June to September 2026 index values can still change. In primary metals, prices rose 4.8 points more than orders in dollars, so the volume decline would hold even if the true price change were a few points smaller. The fabricated metal and electrical equipment estimates sit within about two points of zero, so read them as flat to slightly up.

How should I set 2027 quotas and pipeline targets?

1. Split your own 2026 bookings into price and volume before you set 2027 targets. Take bookings by product line and divide out the average price increase you actually realized, so the team sees how much of 2026’s growth came from price.
2. Write 2027 quotas and pipeline targets in units, tons, machine hours or orders, and add price as a separate assumption in the plan. Our one-page 2027 marketing plan has a place for each.
3. Ask your largest accounts for their 2027 tonnage plans if you sell into mills, service centers or other primary metals customers. The orders mills booked in 2026 were up 16.0% in dollars but down about 4.0% in volume, so a supplier whose sales follow mill output should not plan on 2026’s dollar growth.
4. If your 2026 number depended on price increases, plan the 2027 increase and its notice now, using our guide to the price increase letter and tariff surcharge notice.
5. Machinery and automation sellers should put more of the 2027 pipeline budget behind capital equipment buyers, where volume growth is real, and recheck these numbers when Census publishes its revised September figures and its October advance report in November 2026. Our 2027 economic indicators release calendar lists the dates after that.