• Private manufacturing construction spending jumped 8.5% to a record $92.86 billion in January, soaring 31.2% over the past 12 months. These data speak to the strength of the manufacturing sector and the need to increase capacity to meet very robust demand.
  • New orders for manufactured goods rose 1.4% to a record $544.2 billion in January. Excluding transportation equipment, manufacturing orders rose 1.0% in January, also an all-time high. Overall, the manufacturing sector continued to expand strongly—despite lingering supply chain, workforce and pricing pressures—with new orders soaring 13.6% year-over-year.
  • The ISM® Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index® rose from 57.6 in January to 58.6 in February, led by strength in new orders, which grew at the fastest pace in five months. Cost pressures continued to be highly elevated, but with the index for prices declining from 76.1 in January to 75.6 in February. Wait times for deliveries continued to be very long.
  • Manufacturing employment rose by 36,000 in February, with robust hiring in the sector despite sizable ongoing challenges. The manufacturing sector added 365,000 workers in calendar year 2021, the most since 1994. In the first two months of 2022, the sector hired 52,000 employees, bringing the total number of employees to 12,607,000 in February 2022. With that said, there remained 178,000 fewer manufacturing employees relative to pre-pandemic levels.
  • The average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers in manufacturing rose to $24.54 in February, up 4.9% from one year ago and remaining very elevated.