The 19-Year Ceiling

By Mercer Hale. From MFGCalcs Magazine, Issue 1, November 2026, page 20.

For 19 years, the industry that includes the country’s machine shops has not climbed back to the mark it set in the spring of 2007, once prices are taken out. It is not close. This spring, after five straight quarters of growth, it was still about a fifth short.

The mark is value added: what fabricated metal makers produce beyond the metal, power and services they buy, in chained 2017 dollars. The Bureau of Economic Analysis put it at an annual rate of $171.6 billion that April through June. This spring it was $136.8 billion, and the climb had begun from the lowest point since 2009. Getting back would take nine more quarters like the last five, which nothing promises. At that pace the industry would reach its 2007 mark in the third quarter of 2028.

Manufacturing as a whole has no such ceiling. After prices, it stands almost exactly as far above the spring of 2007 as fabricated metal stands below it.

Counted in dollars, fabricated metal has none either: since the spring of 2007 its value added has risen by more than half, while the price BEA’s figures imply for it has nearly doubled. Take the price rise out of the dollar rise and what is left is the ceiling. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ index for bolts, nuts, screws, rivets and washers was about twice as high this spring as in that one. On the bolt index alone, twice the dollars of bolts is about the same number of bolts.

This spring the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s contacts among fabricated metal makers reported flat production, with more orders from the defense industry and fewer sales to farm, auto and home-building customers, the bank said in the Fed’s Beige Book in June.

One of those customers has grown since 2007: after prices, BEA’s figures put motor vehicles and parts nearly three-quarters above their level that spring. Why the metal parts makers did not follow, the figures cannot say. Value added is counted where the work is done: a part a customer makes in its own plant counts toward the customer’s industry, an imported part toward no American industry, and neither toward fabricated metal.

AMT, the Association for Manufacturing Technology, pointed to the first of those, work kept in the customer’s own plant, in its August report on machinery orders: “While job shops represent the largest customer segment for manufacturing technology, the amount of machinery they have ordered over the last several years has lagged behind the market as OEMs made the necessary investments to absorb increased production demands internally rather than by contracting with external job shops.”

In October 2025 a fabricator answering the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ survey of Texas manufacturers pointed to its customers’ cash: “Our customers want to buy, but they lack cash on hand. Multiple competitor closures are funneling demand, but our customers lack liquidity to fund required deposits and interim payments.”

None of these comments is a measurement: each comes from a firm that chose to write one. The one Census Bureau count we have, 17,154 machine shops in 2023, cannot say how many have closed since 2007.

This July, a fabricated metal maker wrote in the Dallas Fed survey: “We will close our 1951-2026 business due to lack of demand.”

Live data from this story

• Change Since Spring 2007: Manufacturing output by industry
• Fabricated Metal Output: Fabricated metal products output

Read it in the magazine

• MFGCalcs Magazine, Issue 1, November 2026, page 20