AMT U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO)

The order book of American metalworking, kept by the trade association that represents the builders. AMT U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) is AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology's monthly report tracking new orders of metalworking (machine tool) technology across the United States. Each print carries one headline dollar figure plus the arithmetic that makes it usable: change against the prior month, change against the same month a year earlier, and the cumulative year-to-date total. AMT has collected the series since 1998, so the record holds roughly 330 monthly observations - long enough to span several full capital-equipment cycles.

The current stretch of the curve is loud. June 2026 orders reached $672.7 million - up 15.6% month over month and 56.8% year over year - closing a record first half at $3.44 billion, the strongest half-year since collection began. December 2025 ended the prior year at $814.3 million with a full-year total of $5.74 billion. A companion series in the same programme tracks U.S. Cutting Tool Shipments, which ran $270.5 million in June 2026, up 31.7% year over year.

In Datadory's catalog of 1,744 datasets across 159 viable industries this record sits in the Industrial Gases slice and scores 6/10 for quality - the honest middle band for an association-published series whose deepest cuts live beyond the headline numbers. [Get a sample of this dataset](#request) and we return real rows cut to the months you name.

Three releases pulled during the August 2026 research pass, exactly as they land:

report_month : 2026-06   new_orders_value_usd : 672.7M   mom_change_pct : +15.6%   yoy_change_pct : +56.8%
report_month : 2026-H1   ytd_total_usd       : 3.44B     note           : strongest half-year since collection began in 1998
report_month : 2025-12   new_orders_value_usd : 814.3M   ytd_total_usd  : 5.74B (full-year 2025)
companion    : 2026-06   cutting_tool_shipments_usd : 270.5M   yoy_change_pct : +31.7%   ytd_total_usd : 1.47B

Read together, the rows sketch a demand shock rather than a blip. June's +15.6% month-over-month move lands on top of an already-strong base, which is why the year-over-year figure runs nearly three times larger at +56.8%. The half-year cumulative matters more than any single month: $3.44 billion booked by mid-2026 means the year was already carrying more order value than most complete years in the series' early decades. Every row arrives keyed to its reference month with the three growth measures attached, so nothing shows up as an unlabeled number.

Five fields define every observation, and four of them are the numbers the machine-tool economy actually gets quoted by. Field definitions below are marked inferred - mapped from release summaries rather than confirmed against the deepest documentation layer, which is flagged honestly rather than papered over.

• report_month - the reference month the orders figure covers.
• new_orders_value_usd - total dollar value of new metalworking machinery orders for the month ($672.7M for June 2026).
• mom_change_pct - percentage change versus the previous month (+15.6% for June 2026).
• yoy_change_pct - percentage change versus the same month of the prior year (+56.8% for June 2026).
• ytd_total_usd - cumulative year-to-date order value ($3.44B for H1 2026; $5.74B for full-year 2025).

Breakdowns by manufacturing technology segment and region sit under additional fields on request rather than in the base dictionary - the exact column names could not be confirmed on the research pass, so they are quoted per request instead of promised blind. Ask for them alongside your sample and we confirm the layout before anything ships.

• Geography: United States, measured nationally. Deeper geographic cuts below the national aggregate are handled through the on-request layer described above.
• Temporal: 1998 to present, monthly - roughly 330 observations, enough history to compare today's order surge against the peaks and troughs of several prior capital-spending cycles.
• Granularity: One observation per reference month at national level, each carrying order dollars, two growth rates and a year-to-date cumulative. Segment-level and regional resolutions join via request.

A companion U.S. Cutting Tool Shipments series runs alongside the orders line on the same monthly rhythm - June 2026 shipments of $270.5 million and $1.47 billion year to date - so consumables demand can be read next to capital-equipment demand without stitching sources.

API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.

You pick the channel and the cadence; the field dictionary above travels unchanged across all three. Teams loading full history once tend toward file extracts joined against their own production or revenue tables; products surfacing a demand gauge inside an app take a scoped feed; analysts running models in SQL take warehouse load. Name the months and fields when you request the sample - the sample ships first either way, and cadence changes afterward are a settings conversation, not a re-integration project.

Machine tools are capital equipment ordered months before they ship, install and start producing - which makes the orders line one of the cleanest leading indicators in U.S. manufacturing:

• Leading-indicator work - front-run industrial production and machinery shipment prints by watching order momentum turn before output data does; the +56.8% June 2026 year-over-year move is exactly the kind of signal that arrives here first.
• Equity research overlays - map monthly order dollars onto machinery, tooling and industrial stocks as an earnings-season context series, with the year-to-date cumulative smoothing single-month noise.
• Demand timing for sellers - time outreach to machine shops and job shops against order acceleration; shops that just booked record order value buy tooling, spares and capacity next.
• Competitive intelligence - frame category demand swings behind any equipment maker's quarterly results, separating market-wide surges from company-specific execution.
• Citation-grade macro commentary - anchor reporting and academic work on U.S. manufacturing investment to an association-published series with named provenance instead of an anonymous estimate.
• Model features - feed a monthly demand pulse back to 1998 into forecasting panels as an exogenous variable, with growth rates already computed so no derivation leaks into the pipeline.

Investors and quant researchers get the earliest regular read on U.S. capital-goods demand - a monthly pulse usable as a factor input or an earnings overlay for industrial names. Market researchers and consultants get a quarter-century of consistently-collected order history for sizing and cycle-positioning work. Data scientists and ML engineers get a compact, tidy exogenous series with growth rates precomputed. Sales and growth teams get a demand-direction check before committing outreach budget to metalworking accounts. Competitive intelligence and product teams get the market backdrop that separates a rising tide from a good quarter. Journalists, academics and students get a citable trade-association source behind every figure. All delivered daily, weekly, or hourly.

Provenance note - USMTO is compiled by AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology, the U.S. trade association for the manufacturing-technology industry, whose members build and sell the machine tools being counted. The series has run continuously since 1998, and the same research programme publishes the companion U.S. Cutting Tool Shipments report.

Leading-indicator note - orders measure booked business, not production. Because capital equipment is specified, quoted and contracted before it is built, the orders line typically turns before output and shipment measures do - the reason it earns a place ahead of lagging series in dashboards.

Completeness note - field definitions on this record are marked inferred, and the segment- and region-level column names could not be confirmed on the research pass; both facts are stated up front, and the affected cuts ship under additional fields on request once the layout is confirmed.

Where to go next - for the European side of the same equipment market, pair with CECIMO European Machine Tool Sector Data; for output rather than orders, the Federal Reserve's Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization (G.17) series is the natural complement; for India, IMTMA Machine Tool Industry Data covers the subcontinent's machine tool economy.