After a strong first quarter, U.S. manufacturers orders for new machine tools slipped to $593.6 million during April 2026. It was a -12.5% drop from the March order total, but still 33.2% higher than the April 2025 new order total, according to the U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders report.
The report also indicated that total of machine units ordered for the month dropped too, by -13.67% from March to 1,852 during April; that signifies a 5.4% increase in units ordered over April 2025.
Through the first four months of 2026, new orders totaled $2.19 billion, up 28.9% versus January-April 2025.
AMT - the Assn. for Manufacturing Technology reports the monthly totals for new-order values and machine units for metal-cutting and metal-forming machinery, nationwide and in six regions. The USMTO report serves as an index to future manufacturing activity, as machining operations invest in capacity to support their anticipated production activity.
“While the value of machinery is showing strong growth, the number of units sold continues to grow at a slower pace,” AMT noted. “The gap between average order-value growth and machine tool inflation has widened in the first few months of 2026, indicating that, although some pricing pressures persist across the industry, a significant portion of the order-value growth is due to additional automation being added to orders of increasingly sophisticated machinery.”
AMT reported that contract machine shops (aka, job shops) demand for new machines continued to trail the overall market, though that trend has reversed in 2026 as orders by those operations “largely matches (sig) the market’s pace.”
The true strength of current market demand is the orders from aerospace manufacturers, but AMT noted that during April “the second time this year, the value of (aerospace) orders increased more slowly than the number of units. This could indicate that aerospace manufacturers are beginning to buy less sophisticated machinery to quickly boost capacity.”
Regionally, only the North Central-East ($109.7 million, +7.7%) and South Central ($68.6 million, +14.8%) increased order values from March to April, though all six geographic sectors are recording positive increases in order values versus April 2025 and for the current year to-date.
“The current upswing in demand for manufacturing technology began in September 2024, when interest rates began to decline, heightened political uncertainty began to subside, and IMTS 2024 opened in Chicago,” AMT explained. “Since then, capacity utilization for machinery manufacturers has steadily trended upward.
“With order activity already elevated and customer preferences turning toward more sophisticated machinery, the manufacturing technology industry needs to closely monitor capacity constraints to avoid a similar expansion in delivery times,” according to AMT.