Each quarter, UNIDO Statistics publishes a report summarizing current growth trends in world manufacturing production across countries and major sectors. The report evaluates production data, collected and published by National Statistical Offices (NSOs) in UNIDO’s member states. This is the first statistical publication by UNIDO to be released on quarterly data. While a lot of economic research is based on detailed annual statistics on business structure, other international data users, especially policymakers and businesses, require more recent assessments of production trends.

Since the last quarter of 2021, global manufacturing output had maintained a stable year-over-year growth rate between 3 and 4 per cent. However, this changed in the fourth quarter of 2022, when growth decelerated considerably to 1.5 per cent. On a quarter-on-quarter comparison, global manufacturing suffered a loss of 0.3 per cent. Ongoing challenges for global manufacturing, such as high energy prices, raising global interest rates and persistent disruptions in the supply chain of raw materials and intermediate goods, have led to weakening confidence and mounting uncertainty. Consequently, manufacturing activity in many economies, particularly industrial economies in Europe, are facing increasing challenges and unstable prospects.

This report presents estimates for the fourth quarter of 2022 as well as revised estimates for the third quarter of 2022.

Data can be found here.