Aircraft orders and AI spending keep US factory demand climbing

American factories got another vote of confidence in September. Durable goods orders rose 1.8% for the month, carried by a jump in aircraft demand and a steady flow of spending on AI hardware. The total reached $345.4 billion, an increase of $6.3 billion from August, and it came in above analysts’ expectations. Planes did the heavy lifting Transportation equipment was the headline driver. Orders in that category climbed 4.6% in September. Inside that number sat the real outlier. Orders for nondefense aircraft and parts surged 28.4% in a single month. That is why economists also watch a narrower gauge. Core capital goods orders strip out defense and aircraft to show what ordinary businesses are spending on equipment. That measure rose 0.5% in September. It followed a 1.6% gain in August, so the category held most of its prior strength instead of giving it back. Shipments of core capital goods did even better, rising 1.2%. The AI buildout shows up in the order book Orders for computers and related products, a group that includes servers, storage devices and peripherals, rose 27% from a year earlier, per Axios. That included a gain of nearly 4% in September alone. A broader category, ...