However, with a year-to-date total of $966.6-million, the 2010 USMTC figure is running 53% ahead of its counterpart in 2009.

Peter Borden, president of the distributors’ national organization, commented that he’s not surprised by typical ebb and flow in capital spending. “We have seen an additional month of substantial orders, which helps to confirm that a sustainable recovery is taking place, despite the buzz of those forecasting a W-shaped rebound.

“Industry forecasts for the year,” Borden continued, “have been revised slightly upward by many sources and, if Congress passes the bonus depreciation allowance, this could accelerate growth even further.”

Member companies in Borden’s group, the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Assn., volunteer with others in AMT to contribute data for the USMTC report, which covers orders for machine tools and other factory production gear.

Reporting companies’ statistics are broken down by customer region. For the year-to-date, the Northeast is 21% ahead of 2009 at the same time. The South, with a total of $154.2-million for the first five months, is 87% ahead. The Midwest’s YTD figure comes in 45% higher than last year. The Central region is 83% better; and the West is running 34% ahead of 2009.

The upturned trend going forward appears clear. One analytical tool economists use is the 12/12 Pressure Curve, which focuses on the rate of change in the series of figures). Points on the Curve are calculated by adding the data from the most-recent 12 months and dividing that sum by the total of the 12 months a year ago. The results are expressed as percentages; when plotted the slope is viewed as predictive.

The 12-month rate of change for the most recent USMTC statistic, May, is -30%, preceded by April at -38% and March at -47%. That is to say that the one-year moving average of USMTC orders is trending toward positive numbers.

For the record, now that revised figures for the fourth quarter of last year have been posted, American machine-tool shipments last year, at $2,030.6-million, were the lowest since the year 2002, in which factories sent out $2,002.1-million.

For the first quarter of 2010, shipments came to $428.3-million. That’s down 25% from the same quarter in 2009, and it’s half the volume of the first quarter of 2008.