Canadian manufacturing sales fall 0.4% in July, ending a five-month run of gains

Statistics Canada published its Monthly Survey of Manufacturing for July on Monday 14 September 2026, the same day as the August inflation figures (CPI report).

The figures

• Sales: down 0.4% to $78.7 billion in July, after five consecutive monthly increases
• Sales in constant dollars, which remove the effect of price changes: down 1.4%
• On a year earlier: sales were up 10.9%

Sales fell further in constant dollars than in current dollars, which means higher prices held up part of the value of what factories sold.

By industry

• Chemical products: down 6.6% to $5.9 billion
• Food manufacturing: down 1.4% to $13.9 billion
• Petroleum and coal products: up 1.9% to $10.4 billion

Inventories, orders and capacity

• Inventories: up 0.3% to a record $127.5 billion
• Inventory-to-sales ratio: 1.62, up from 1.61 in June. The ratio is the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current pace of sales.
• Unfilled orders: up 1.9% to a record $134.6 billion
• Capacity utilization: 80.7%, down from 82.2% in June

The wider picture for Canada

The survey covers July, a month before the latest labour and price data. Canada lost 42,000 jobs in August (report), and consumer prices rose 3.0% in the year to August, or 2.4% excluding gasoline. The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25% on 2 September (report), and second-quarter GDP figures are in our earlier report.

Factory data rarely moves the Canadian dollar as much as jobs, inflation or oil prices (oil and the Canadian dollar), but it fills in how the economy entered the third quarter. Live prices: USD/CAD.