April machine tool consumption drops 70.7% YTD

Signs still point to a grueling economic performance in industry, as April’s U.S. manufacturing technology consumption totaled $97.04 million, down 41.5 percent from March and off by 77.7 percent from a year ago.

The data, which comes from the Association for Manufacturing Technology and the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association, paints an even bleaker picture: with a year-to-date total of $497.40 million, 2009 is down 70.7 percent from 2008.

“Industry executives have speculated whether we have reached the bottom of this current economic downturn,” said Douglas K. Woods, AMT president. “The 41 percent drop in April orders from March levels and the Chapter 11 filings of GM and Chrysler eliminated any doubt that we still have a couple of rough months ahead.”

While each of the five geographic regions of the U.S. industrial base reported lower totals from as recently as March, no area was hit harder than the Midwest. According to the AMT and AMTDA report, April manufacturing technology consumption in the Midwest Region totaled was 41.9 percent less than that of March and off by 81.7 percent from last April.