U.S. manufacturers booked $677.2 billion in new orders in September, up 1.8% from August and the third straight monthly increase. Transportation equipment accounted for about 43 cents of every dollar of the increase. Orders also rose outside transportation, though by less than the headline figure suggests.
The Census Bureau's November 3 report put the increase at $12.2 billion after seasonal adjustment. Economists surveyed by Reuters had expected a 1.2% rise. The bureau also revised August's gain to 0.3%, from the 0.1% previously reported.
How much of the gain came from transportation?
Transportation equipment orders rose from $114.6 billion to $119.9 billion, according to the bureau's industry breakdown. The roughly $5.3 billion increase accounted for about 43% of the total gain. Reuters identified aircraft bookings as one contributor. Transportation is a wider category than aircraft, so the whole $5.3 billion cannot be assigned to plane orders.
Subtract transportation from both months and the rest of the total went from $550.4 billion to $557.4 billion, an increase of about 1.3%. That leaves roughly $7 billion of the increase elsewhere in manufacturing. The calculation keeps both months on the same seasonally adjusted basis.
The Census Bureau's breakdown by type of goods shows some of the variation. Orders for motor vehicles and parts rose 0.4%. The information technology grouping was flat at the report's precision even as the narrower computers and related products line rose 4.2%. Those categories overlap with other ways of grouping the same orders, so their changes cannot simply be added together.
Equipment orders and shipments tell different parts of the story
Orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft rose 0.6%, revised from the advance estimate of 0.5%. Economists follow that series as a gauge of business equipment spending plans because excluding aircraft reduces the effect of big plane orders. Shipments in the same category rose 1.2%. The two figures cover different activity. An order records a booking, while a shipment records goods that went out. A September shipment can fill an order placed months earlier.
Across manufacturing, shipments rose 1.3% to $668.5 billion and unfilled orders rose 0.9% to about $1.62 trillion. The backlog gives some sense of the work still on order. Its dollar value alone gives a buyer no delivery date, and the nationwide total cannot tell a supplier how much demand its own customers will bring in.
Why the October factory survey is a separate reading
The Institute for Supply Management's October survey put its manufacturing index at 55.5, up from 54.5 in September. Its purchasing managers report the direction of changes in their businesses. A reading above 50 signals expansion. Census measures the value of orders, shipments and inventories, so its 1.8% increase and ISM's 55.5 reading cannot be compared as growth rates.
The Census figures are in current dollars. A manufacturer can book more dollars because it sells more units, charges higher prices or takes orders for a more expensive mix of goods. The report also gives no count of factory jobs added. Hiring depends on how much work manufacturers can handle with existing staff and capacity, among other factors. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment report, scheduled for November 6, is the next separate check on factory payrolls.
One more distinction matters when comparing the figures with 2025. The 7.2% at the far right of the Census orders table compares January through September 2026 with the same nine months a year earlier, before seasonal adjustment. The 1.8% figure compares September with August alone, after seasonal adjustment. Both describe order values, over two different windows.
The bureau also publishes unadjusted dollar totals for individual months. Comparing September with the previous September on that basis gives $707.2 billion against $638.3 billion, or about 10.8% growth. That comparison answers a question about one month's order values. The nine-month figure gives a broader view and is less dependent on how much business fell into September.
