The Gardner Business Index

The Gardner Business Index (GBI): Metalworking — a monthly diffusion index built from a survey of U.S. metalworking job shops and manufacturers across six components (new orders, production, backlog, employment, exports, supplier deliveries) with a 50-point expansion/contraction threshold, plus a separate Future Business Index capturing 12-month expectations, year-end historical comparisons, and materials-price and regional/industry cuts, alongside the related MetalBench operational benchmarking programme run off shop-floor submissions.

Open buyer room →

Sample

Brickroad customers

Sample this dataset before you buy it.

Your sourcing agent asks Mmsonline and files the sample in your catalog — private to you.

Start 7-day trialNothing is charged until the trial ends.

Coverage

Universe, instruments and categories.

Industry: Industrial Machinery & Supplies
Instruments: equities
Categories: AlternativeSentiment

Dataset card

Type: not stated
Format: Tabular — monthly index readings and component detail published through a trade-media and research service; underlying survey responses held internally
Volume: Order of 10^4 published observations: six components plus composite plus a forward index across several hundred monthly periods, plus regional, industry and materials-price cuts — with an undisclosed shop-floor operational benchmarking dataset behind it.
Users: Est. low hundreds of survey respondents forming the monthly panel, within a subscription readership served by a publisher of roughly 220 staff; neither panel size nor subscriber count is disclosed.
History: 35 years
Update frequency: not stated
Growth: Active — monthly index still publishing (December 2025 reading 48.5, up 0.4 points, with the Future Business Index at 65.4) alongside a continuing editorial and events programme. The measured cycle sits at the margin: the composite is just below the 50 expansion line while forward expectations are strongly optimistic.
Launched: Est. 1980s-1990s for the Gardner Business Index (basis: the article compares the current December against the prior three Decembers and the index has run as a standing monthly gauge for many years; the trade title itself is a long-established U.S. metalworking magazine).
Delivery: not stated
Entity mapping: not stated
Sample: not stated
Point-in-time: not stated
Licence: not stated

supplier index read from their site