Growth of production of German machinery industry 1991 - 2023

Since the 1990s, the machinery industry has needed 7 - 10 years to achieve new production records

The data from the German Federal Statistical Office goes back to 1991, resulting in a span of 32 years up to 2023. This report shows the trend in German machinery industry's production for this period.

February 19th, 2024 - A glance at the chart shows it:

• To reach again a higher high in production, the machinery industry needs 7 to 10 years since the 1990s.

Three major phases of growth in German machinery industry can be seen from 1991 to 2023. Finally a decline in production since the end of 2018 to 2023.

In 1991, production in the German machinery industry reached a high, after which it started to decline. It took almost 10 years for production to grow to a higher high in 2001.During this time, production growth was 0.3% per year.

We do not look at monthly production index data. Rather, we condense them into a moving annual average - the dashed line in the chart. Moving means: a new monthly value of the production index is included and the last index value, the twelfth, is disregarded. Thus, for each of its values, the dashed line represents the average of the last twelve values of the production index.

The new and higher high of production in 2001 was followed by 7 years of growth until 2008, with an annual growth rate of 4.0% per year.

This high in production was followed by the global economic crisis of 2008/09, and it was not until 10 years later in 2018 that this high in the trend was exceeded by a razor-thin margin, with 107.1 index points in October 2018 compared with 106.4 index points in September 2008.

Since then, maschine production was not able to approach this October 2018 high again. Instead, production declined from the end of 2018 until the end of 2023 by 2.1% per year.

What can be seen from more than 30 years of production growth?
 

• A higher high in production has always been followed by a decline in production.
  
  
• The period from a production high to a higher high has been 10 years twice and 7 years once.
  
  
• Annual production growth in the two 10-year periods is very low, at 0.3% and 0.06%, respectively.
  
  
• In the last five years, production has not grown any further and has actually fallen.