Press release No. 067 of 17 February 2023

Stock of orders in manufacturing, December 2022
-0.4% on the previous month (calendar and seasonally adjusted)
+1.2% on the same month of the previous year (calendar adjusted)

Range of the stock of orders, December 2022
7.4 months

WIESBADEN – The real (price adjusted) stock of orders in manufacturing was 0.4% lower in December 2022 than in November 2022 on a seasonally and calendar adjusted basis, according to provisional results of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). In the course of 2022, the stock of orders increased slightly, reaching a level in December 2022 that was by 1.2% higher than in December 2021. This means that the development returned almost to normal last year, following a large increase in unfilled orders in 2021 when Covid-19 related catch-up effects were observed.

New orders and production align

The stock of orders is still on a very high level. By comparison to the time before corona, unfilled orders in December 2022 were 30.8% higher than in December 2019. This strong increase arose significantly from supply chain problems, which affected big parts of the industrial production particularly between the middle of the year 2021 until the middle of 2022 and thus caused an orders’ bottleneck. With the decreasing shortage in material, new orders and production align more and more.
A dossier on the "Short-term indicators" page of the Federal Statistical Office's website provides an analysis of the relationship between material shortages, new orders, production and prices in industry.

Unfilled domestic orders were up 0.1% in December 2022 from November 2022, whereas the stock of foreign orders was down 0.7%.

The stock of orders rose by 2.1% for manufacturers of intermediate goods and fell by 1.0% for manufacturers of capital goods. In the consumer goods sector, the stock of orders was 0.1% higher than in the previous month.

Range of the stock of orders slightly up to 7.4 months

The range of the stock of orders went up to 7.4 months in December 2022 (November 2022: 7.3 months). The range was 10.6 months for producers of capital goods (November 2022: 10.7 months), 3.8 months for intermediate goods (November 2022: 3.7 months) and 3.4 months for consumer goods (November 2022: also 3.4 months).

The range indicates for how many months companies would theoretically have to produce goods until all orders on hand are fulfilled – assuming constant turnover and no new orders being received. It is calculated as the ratio of the current stock of orders and average turnover of the last 12 months in the respective branch.

Methodological notes:

The stock of orders comprises the sum of new orders at the end of the reporting month that have not yet resulted in sales by that date and that have not been cancelled. The rates of change are based on the price-adjusted index of the stock of orders in the manufacturing sector. The average result in 2015 is used as the basis of the index and is set at 100 index points (2015 = 100). Seasonal and calendar adjustment was performed using the X13 JDemetra+ method. The order backlog is recorded and evaluated based on the German Classification of Economic Activities, 2008 edition (WZ 2008). Like new orders, the stock of orders is only recorded in selected branches of the manufacturing industry.

More information:

Detailed data are available in the GENESIS-Online database (42155-0004 indices of the stock of orders and 42113-0001 ranges of the stock of orders).

Detailed information on production in energy-intensive industrial branches is available on the "Industry, manufacturing" page.