Press release No. 111 of 20 March 2023

Stock of orders in manufacturing, January 2023
-0.5% on the previous month (seasonally and calendar adjusted)
+1.2% on the same month of the previous year (calendar adjusted)

Range of the stock of orders, January 2023
7.4 months

WIESBADEN – The real (price adjusted) stock of orders in manufacturing was 0.5% lower in January 2023 than in December 2022 on a seasonally and calendar adjusted basis, according to provisional results of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). The stock of orders was 1.2% higher than in January 2022.

Declining orders in the manufacture of machinery and equipment (-2.2% on the previous month on a seasonally and calendar adjusted basis) and other transport equipment (-1.9%) contributed substantially to the negative development of the stock of orders in January 2023. The manufacture of other transport equipment comprises, among others, the manufacture of ships, railway rolling stock, air and spacecraft. In contrast, the production of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers (+2.5%), in particular, had a positive effect on the stock of orders.

Unfilled domestic orders remained unchanged in January 2023, whereas the stock of foreign orders was down 0.8% compared to December 2022.

The stock of orders rose by 0.3% for manufacturers of intermediate goods and fell by 0.8% for manufacturers of capital goods. In the consumer goods sector, the stock of orders was 1.2% lower than in the previous month.

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 January 2023 were 28.7% higher than in January 2020. 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.

Range of the stock of orders unchanged by 7.4 months

The range of the stock of orders remained unchanged at 7.4 months in January 2023. The range went up to 10.7 months for producers of capital goods (December 2022: 10.6 months) and stayed constant at 3.8 months for intermediate goods and 3.4 months for consumer goods.

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 differing comparative periods must be taken into account in all press releases on short-term indicators. Short-term economic monitoring focuses on month-on-month comparisons of seasonally and calendar adjusted figures. These reflect short-term economic trends. Year-on-year comparisons of calendar adjusted results permit long-term comparisons of levels and are not influenced by seasonal fluctuations and calendar effects. The results of month-on-month and year-on-year comparisons may differ considerably because of the Covid-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine.

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.