Between 2019 and August 2026, the monthly value of goods shipped by American manufacturers rose from an average of $483 billion to $659 billion, an increase of 36%. Over the same period the producer price index for manufactured goods rose 42%. The Federal Reserve's index of manufacturing output, which measures volume, finished within half a point of its 2019 level.
136.2 Prices
142.1 Output
99.6
Read together, the three lines describe a sector that sells about the same quantity of goods as it did in 2019, at higher prices. Output fell by a fifth in the spring of 2020, recovered within a year and has moved sideways since. Shipments in dollars tracked the price line.
| Index, 2019 = 100 | 2019 | 2022 | 2025 | Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value of shipments | 100.0 | 121.5 | 124.9 | 136.2 |
| Producer prices | 100.0 | 126.8 | 128.1 | 142.1 |
| Industrial output | 100.0 | 98.6 | 97.9 | 99.6 |
Annual averages, except August 2026.
What it means for one company
On an income statement, growth from price and growth from customers look the same. A manufacturer whose revenue is up 30% since 2019 may be selling the same volume to the same customers at higher prices, and the sector data says that is the typical case. Growth from price depends on what costs and competitors do next. Growth from new customers, and from existing customers buying more, depends on the company.
A test to run on your own numbers
Take revenue for 2019 and for the last twelve months, and split the change into three parts.
- Price: the same products sold to the same customers at different prices.
- Volume from existing customers: more units or more product lines sold to accounts that bought from you in 2019.
- New customers: revenue from accounts that did not buy from you in 2019.
The ERP holds everything this needs, in invoice lines with customer, part number, quantity and unit price. The third number shows whether the company can win business it doesn't already have.
Limits
These are totals for the whole sector. Some industries grew in volume and others shrank, and individual companies did better or worse than the average. The price index covers prices received by domestic producers across all of manufacturing, so any one company's price changes will differ. Each series is seasonally adjusted and divided by its own 2019 average.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories and Orders (M3): value of shipments, total manufacturing, seasonally adjusted. FRED series AMTMVS. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AMTMVS
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index by Industry: total manufacturing industries. FRED series PCUOMFGOMFG. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCUOMFGOMFG
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Industrial Production: Manufacturing (NAICS). FRED series IPMAN. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPMAN