The 12-month average, which irons out Boeing’s huge orders, shows the trend: +8.8% year-over-year. Orders excluding aircraft & defense jumped by 1.5% in February from January.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

When Boeing receives an order for 30 jet aircraft in one month, that huge order of billions of dollars pushes up durable goods orders that manufacturers in the US receive and that are published monthly. The next month, Boeing might not receive a big order like that, which will push down durable goods orders. We’ll sort that out in a moment.

Total durable goods orders, including aircraft and defense, fell by 1.4% in February from January, to $315 billion, seasonally adjusted. But they were up by 7.3% from a year ago (blue line), according to data from the Census Bureau today.

The 12-month average shows the trend in US manufacturing (red line). It irons out the month-to-month spikes and plunges of huge aircraft orders. In February, it rose by 0.5% from January and by 8.8% year-over-year, not seasonally adjusted. The surge started in early 2025, after flatlining in 2024, and after a multiyear surge out of the pandemic. Orders had essentially stagnated for years before the pandemic.

Orders for nondefense aircraft and parts spike and then plunge by huge amounts, largely driven by orders that Boeing receives. In February, they plunged by 7.7% from January, to $19.2 billion. But compared to February last year, orders were still up by 33%.

It’s not that aircraft orders are not important – they’re very important. But they’re randomly volatile on a month-to-month basis in a meaningless way that distorts the month-to-month figures.

In addition, orders for defense aircraft and defense capital goods might be erratic, especially with a war going on, and we can exclude those too to see through the fog.

So, orders excluding aircraft and defense jumped by 1.5% in February from January and by 5.8% year-over-year to a record $278 billion, seasonally adjusted.

The increase of durable goods orders excluding nondefense aircraft and parts and excluding defense was driven by month-to-month increases in orders at manufacturers of:

• Computers & electronic products: +4.9% to $28 billion
• Motor vehicles & parts: +3.1% to $71 billion
• Primary metals: +2.2% to $29 billion
• Machinery: +1.5% to $41 billion
• Fabricated metal products: +0.5% to $43 billion
• All other durable goods: +0.5% to $50 billion

Only one major category had even a slight month-to-month dip, Electrical equipment, appliances, components: -0.1% to $18 billion. But that was a blip; year-to-date, orders were up by 6.4% from a year ago.

Shifting more manufacturing to the US is crucial for the economy and is crucial for strategic reasons. Trump and Biden were the first Presidents in modern times that understood this. Trump 1 encouraged it with tariffs on imported goods to incentivize companies to shift production to the US. Biden encouraged it with large-scale taxpayer-funded grants and loans paid to companies under the CHIPS Act and other programs to build factories in the US. Trump 2 encouraged it by imposing additional wide-ranging tariffs, and he largely maintained the CHIPS Act but rebranded it.

But it’s not instant. Even shifting production from a factory in another country to an existing factory in the US by adding shifts and more automation, such as GM has been doing, takes time. And the process of building a modern factory, from the moment the decision is made until mass-production starts, takes several years. Manufacturing is complicated and requires a lot of inputs, but it, and its secondary and tertiary effects, are hugely important to the US economy.

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