Status: 07/19/2021 12:22 p.m.
The order backlog in German industry reached a record level in May. What on the face of it looks like a brilliant success, however, has less positive causes.
The German industry is better covered with orders than ever since the statistics began in January 2015. The order backlog grew in May by 2.2 percent on the previous month, adjusted for calendar and seasonality, as the Federal Statistical Office announced today. The open orders from Germany increased by 2.3 percent, those from abroad by 2.1 percent.
Compared to February 2020, i.e. the month before the start of the corona-related restrictions in Germany, the number is now 13.8 percent higher, seasonally and calendar adjusted.
Further bottlenecks in computer chips
However, the inventory data alone gives an incomplete picture of the real situation. In fact, the number of new industrial orders in May actually fell noticeably compared to April. However, since production started up significantly more slowly, mainly due to the bottlenecks in important preliminary products such as semiconductors, the order backlog increased.
The production backlog in German industry is therefore still considerable. As in the previous month, the range of the order backlog is 7.0 months in May. This number indicates how long the companies would theoretically have to produce in order to meet the existing demand, assuming sales remained the same without new orders.
For manufacturers of intermediate goods, i.e. intermediate products for production, the order backlog in May 2021 increased by 1.7 percent compared to April 2021, according to the information. For manufacturers of capital goods, it rose by 2.2 percent. In the consumer goods sector, the order backlog was 5.8 percent higher than in April 2021.
Despite the current problems, German industry is clearly on the upswing this year. One of the main reasons for this is the growing international business. With the USA and China, the most important export customers of German companies are facing a strong economic recovery this year, which is why there is increasing demand for products “Made in Germany”.