Nondefense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a Census Bureau series tracking new business orders for equipment net of volatile civilian-aircraft bookings. Treated as the cleanest monthly proxy for forward business investment intentions, it feeds directly into GDP equipment-spending forecasts and signals corporate capex momentum.
How it works
Drawn from the Census Bureau's monthly Durable Goods (Advance Report on Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories and Orders), the series strips out defense and the lumpy, high-ticket civilian-aircraft category to isolate the underlying trend in equipment investment. New orders lead shipments; core shipments ex-aircraft feed the BEA's equipment-investment line in GDP.
Why it matters now
In the 2025-26 regime the series has become a real-time gauge of the AI capex cycle: data-center, server, and electrical-equipment demand is now large enough to swing the headline, blurring the line between a broad business-investment recovery and a concentrated hyperscaler build-out.
Example
A recent advance durable-goods report saw core capital goods ex-aircraft orders revised to a 3.4 percent gain, attributed largely to AI infrastructure spending — illustrating how a single demand vector (data-center buildout) can dominate a series historically read as a broad, economy-wide capex signal.
Frequently asked
- What is core capital goods ex-aircraft?
- Core capital goods ex-aircraft is the Census Bureau's series for nondefense capital goods orders excluding civilian aircraft, the cleanest monthly proxy for forward business equipment investment. Published in the monthly Advance Durable Goods report, it strips out lumpy defense and aircraft bookings to isolate underlying capex momentum, and feeds directly into GDP equipment-spending forecasts.
- Why does core capital goods ex-aircraft exclude aircraft and defense?
- Aircraft and defense orders are excluded because they are extremely lumpy: a single Boeing widebody order or military procurement can swing the headline by billions in one month, masking the underlying trend. Stripping both out leaves a cleaner read on broad-based business investment intentions that desks use as a forward signal for equipment spending.
- How does core capital goods orders differ from core capital goods shipments?
- Orders measure new bookings and lead the cycle, signaling future investment intentions; shipments measure goods actually delivered and feed the BEA's equipment-investment line in GDP. Desks watch ex-aircraft orders for forward momentum and ex-aircraft shipments for the contemporaneous GDP nowcast. Orders turn first, making them the more predictive but noisier of the two.
- Why does core capital goods ex-aircraft matter for the AI capex cycle?
- In 2025-26 core capital goods ex-aircraft has become a real-time gauge of the AI build-out, because data-center, server, and electrical-equipment demand is now large enough to move the headline. This blurs the distinction between a broad investment recovery and a concentrated hyperscaler build, so analysts increasingly decompose the series by category.
- Is core capital goods ex-aircraft a leading or coincident indicator?
- Core capital goods ex-aircraft orders are a leading indicator: new bookings precede shipments and actual equipment investment by one to several months. The series is part of the Conference Board's broader investment-signal toolkit and is among the first hard-data reads on whether corporate capex is accelerating or rolling over each month.