Factories are humming again

Every month the Institute for Supply Management asks purchasing managers at factories across the country a short set of questions. Are you getting more orders or fewer? Making more or less? Hiring or cutting? The answers roll up into one number, published on the first business day of the next month, and anything above 50 means manufacturing is growing.

On October 1, the September reading came in at 54.5. That was the ninth month in a row above 50.

Anyone who has started an old truck on a January morning knows the sequence. The engine turns over, coughs, sputters, and you hold your breath. Then it catches, and a minute later it settles into a steady hum you stop noticing.

American factories spent most of 2025 coughing. The index sat below 50 for ten straight months and ended the year at 47.9 in December. In January 2026 the engine caught at 52.6, and it has run above 52 every month since, peaking at 55.6 in July.

Listening to the engine

The parts that matter most are running well. New orders, the best sign of work still to come, read 55.3 in September and have grown for nine months. Order backlogs read 56.4. The employment gauge read 52.7, its third straight month of growth.

The hiring is showing up in the government's own count, too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says factories added 9,000 jobs in September and 72,000 since the low point in December 2025, with September's gains led by machinery and by plastics and rubber.

The honest knock in the engine is that 2025 cost ground. Factory payrolls in September were still about 21,000 below January 2025. And ISM's prices gauge read 77.9, which means factories have paid more for materials for 24 straight months, a cost that can work its way to store shelves.

Both points are true. But direction is what a factory town lives on. Last December the index was shrinking and payrolls were at their low. Nine months later, orders are growing and plants are hiring, though payrolls still have ground to make up.

An engine that has run for nine months is not warming up anymore. ISM publishes the next reading on the first business day of November; if the number starts with a 5, the hum continues.