The manufacturing sector continued its recovery in March, according to a report on manufacturers’ shipments, inventories and orders.

Year-to-date, new orders are up 12.1 percent from 2009, shipments are up 7.7 percent, unfilled orders are down 5 percent and total inventories are down 4 percent, the U.S. Department of Commerce report said.

Total new orders increased $5 billion, or 1.3 percent, to $391.5 billion, making it the 11th time in the past 12 months that new orders for manufactured goods increased. The machinery industry had the largest new order increase – 8.6 percent — from the previous month. The transportation equipment industry had the largest new order decline – 12.3 percent — from February. New orders for durable goods decreased 0.9 percent and nondurable goods increased 2.9 percent.

Shipments in March of nondurable goods had the largest increase – 2.9 percent – from February. The largest decrease in shipments, 2.7 percent, came in the computers and electronic products industry.

Service industries (non-manufacturing businesses), which make up almost 90 percent of the economy, is still lagging behind manufacturing in growth, which has led the economic recovery, Bloomberg reported. However, the Institute for Supply Management’s index of non-manufacturing businesses remained at an almost four-year high in April.

“The recovery probably will continue dawdling along,” Kim Whelan an economic analyst at Wells Fargo Securities Inc., told Bloomberg. “We’re going to need to see improvement in the service sector before the economy as a whole will start to show strength.”