Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey

Results summary

Historical data are available from June 2004 to the most current release month.

*Shown is the number of consecutive months of expansion or contraction in the underlying indicator. Expansion is indicated by a positive index reading and denoted by a (+) in the table. Contraction is indicated by a negative index reading and denoted by a (–) in the table.

**Shown is the number of consecutive months of improvement or worsening in the underlying indicator. Improvement is indicated by a positive index reading and denoted by a (+) in the table. Worsening is indicated by a negative index reading and denoted by a (–) in the table.

Data have been seasonally adjusted as necessary.

Production index

Downloadable chart

Comments from survey respondents

These comments are from respondents’ completed surveys and have been edited for publication.

• Turmoil at the federal level is impacting funding.
• Sales were below projections for January and February; March does not look encouraging. Currently, employee hours have not been affected as we had a busy fourth quarter and need to rebuild finished goods inventory. If sales do not return to normal soon, we will be cutting employee hours. Market conditions are volatile. We do not expect any interest rate cut until June, and that could change if gasoline prices spike because of political tensions.
• Beef markets are getting very expensive, as supply is highly constrained.

• There was not much movement between February and January. There have been some delays in shipping, but other than that, it has been largely the same month over month.

• The shortage of labor that was critical during the pandemic and after has turned to being merely very tight—meaning very difficult to find qualified personnel. Job jumping has ground to a halt. Wage increases are being granted in the 3.5 to 5.0 percent range for employees meeting job requirements.
• We are slow at this very moment, but it's the calm before the storm as our incoming orders are up significantly compared with the prior year to date for our fiscal year ending Sept. 30. We hear others in our industry are very slow, so we are fortunate to have this much work lined up for the next five to six months at least.

• We are seeing a pullback from client orders as they, and us, work to reduce both finished goods and raw material inventories to increase cash flow.

• I have no idea what is going to happen.

• January weather issues hampered production (natural gas curtailments) and shipments due to icy road conditions.
• Interest rates continue to harm the homebuilding materials business. We don’t expect any improvement until interest rates drop.

• We continue to be negatively affected by foreign imports being dumped into our markets and subsidized by their governments.
• Uncertainty has increased on our general legacy business. Our strategy is to diversify our product offerings. Significant capital expenditures are underway to provide processes and equipment to provide these new products.

• We have the best backlog that we have ever had. This began a year ago and continues.
• We are still waiting on our debt renewal.

• We are once again increasing our inventory to meet expected demand. Quotes are increasing as we meet and talk to our customers. However, they are worried about the political environment and the elections, but that doesn’t mean that they are going to change their purchasing decisions.
• There's an odd chill in the air that we can't determine if it's election related, general economic malaise or fear of pending doom. It's very strange. Things are status quo with a bit of negative undertone, which is somewhat disturbing for business owners.

• Please lower interest rates. Capital equipment and manufacturing indexes are at dangerous levels. Help the nearshore movement.
• There have been several private funding groups buying up companies similar to ours. I don't know if we can make it competitively in the market.
• Many of our customers have long-term contracts. We expect the amount of contracts to increase for our remanufacturing capacity.

• Supplier prices continue to increase, and wage/benefits also continue to increase, but we sell into a fixed-income senior market and we can't increase end prices.