Chris: I tend to be a little bit more optimistic than most on things. I think the economy is going along fairly strongly. We've really flipped the conversation almost from more rate cuts to: is there a potential for rate hikes? And that really kind of signals that the economy is going on a lot stronger than people have anticipated. Although measures of consumer confidence are falling and people are worried about different scenarios, they still tend to open their wallets at stores.

Retail sales are up. Consumer spending is still up. And although it is kind of becoming more concentrated in upper income levels, you'll see that across the board, consumers are still demanding goods. Businesses are demanding the technologies that they need to meet that consumer demand. And I think things are going along fairly well.

There still are a lot of open questions in the economy about where certain things are headed, where things are going to end up on balance. But I think overall, the economy is on a really good foundation going into the summer.

Michelle: That's good. It's good to hear a positive outlook. So, in terms of manufacturing, how are things looking for manufacturers today? And also along those lines, do you have any advice for manufacturers right now based on the economy?

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think it's a really good time to be in manufacturing. Of course, from our position, we'd always want to say that. But I really do think it is if you look at where manufacturers are investing currently.

AMT puts together three different statistical programs, USMTO, which tracks machinery orders, our cutting tool market report, which tracks the consumable cutting tools that are used in the machine, and a workholding report, which covers the workholding that holds the metal being worked on.

Whenever I'm talking to non-manufacturing audiences, I always like to joke just so that they can make sense of the data. When the USMTO orders go up, that's when people want to make things. When the workholding and tooling are going up, that's when people are making things. And over the last several months, not only has workholding and tooling orders been up in value, indicating that there's really elevated levels of production, machinery orders are also expanding according to USMTO.

And although there is a little bit of a disparity between measures of value and measures of units, both are moving in the positive direction. And if you take into account the effects of inflation on that dollar unit disparity, there still is a lot of gap. And a lot of that has to do with automation. And looking under the hood at what's driving this, I think a lot of it is manufacturers are ready to meet the increased demands that they've seen over the last couple months and years, and they're investing in the technologies to get that done, including additional quality improvements, additional efficiency improvements in order to meet that demand and hopefully keep their customers happy without too much of a price increase due to increased materials costs, things like that.