Federal Office of Statistics
Industry achieves record order backlog
In December 2021, German industry received many orders – leaving the level before the Corona crisis far behind. Photo: Christophe Gateau/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Bulging order books: In December 2021, German industry left the level before the Corona crisis far behind – and reached a high.
German industry recorded bulging order books in December. The price-adjusted order backlog was 1.5 percent higher than in the previous month and reached the highest level since the statistics were introduced in January 2015, the Federal Statistical Office announced.
The order backlog has grown steadily since June 2020. Businesses in the manufacturing sector therefore constantly received more new orders than they could process. According to the Wiesbaden statisticians, a major reason for this is likely to be delivery bottlenecks for preliminary products.
With the order backlog in December, German industry left the level before the Corona crisis far behind: compared to February 2020, the month before the restrictions due to the pandemic began in Germany, the order backlog in December 2021 was almost calendar and seasonally adjusted a third (29.3 percent) higher.
The range of orders on hand in manufacturing also continued to rise and amounted to 7.7 months in December – also a record since the start of the time series in 2015 process existing orders. Due to delivery bottlenecks and a lack of materials, many companies in Germany are unable to fulfill orders at the usual pace. This dampens production and business.
In 2021, according to earlier information, orders in the industry had increased by 17.8 percent compared to the crisis year 2020. The level of the pre-crisis year 2019 was thus exceeded by a good 9 percent.