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Supply Chain by the Numbers

Nov. 7, 2025

Supply Chain by the Numbers for Nov. 7, 2025

Macy's Spends Big on New DC. US Manufacting Contracts again 2025. Amazon has Strong Q3. IMF Sees Luke Warm GDP Growth


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$640 Million
That amazingly how much Macy’s spent to put up a new, highly automated distribution center near Charlotte, according to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. The DC supports both ecommerce shipments as well as store replenishments. It relies heavily on so called goods to person automation, so that as customer orders come in, robots pick merchandise out of a grid system where goods are stowed and bring the items to workers. Employees then scan the items into a pocket-sortation system that carries the items to a packing station, where workers prepare orders for delivery. A Macy’s exec says the building fulfills orders in less than a day on average, compared with about a day and a half to two days previously.

13%

That was Amazon’s strong revenue growth in Q3 to 180.2 billion, as announced this week in the company’s earnings call. It was also a pretty profitable quarter, with Amazon net income up to $21.1 billion in the quarter, compared with $15.3 billion in Q3 2024, for a big 38% gain. That gave Amazon net income of a solid 11.7% of net revenue, versus 10.8% in 2024. Fulfillment costs increased to $27.6 billion in Q3, up from $24.6 billion in the same period last year. Those costs include the cost of workers need to run its fulfillment centers, sortation centers and other logistics facilities. Also under fulfillment costs are any lease payments for these buildings, or depreciation costs if Amazon owns the facility. Some inbound logistics costs are also included, but not customer shipping costs.



3.2%
That is the revised forecast for global economic growth in 2025 from the economists at the International Monetary Fund, in the IMFs October report. That is down just a bit from the IMFs last projection of 3.3% growth released in April. The 2026 forecast was also revised down to 3.1%. The IMF expects the US economy to slow to 2.0% growth this year from 2.8% in 2025, with a projection for 2.1% growth in 2026. The global growth in 2026 sees advanced economies growing around 1.5% and emerging market and developing economies just above 4%.



34
That is how months out of the last 36 that the US Purchasing Managers Index from the Institute for Supply Management has been below the key 50 score that indicates manufacturing expansion. That trend continued in October, with a PMI of 48.7, down a little from 49.1 in September and still showing contraction, according to the ISM report released this week. Other economic indicators in the month were mostly down. The New Orders Index contracted for the second month in October and was 0.5 percentage point higher than the 48.9 recorded in September but still below the key 50 mark, in bad news for future US manufacturing activity. The reading of the Production Index (48.2) is 2.8 percentage points lower than September’s figure of 51.0 as well as also below the 50 mark.

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