Euroland PMI-Services Score Pulled Almost Even with U.S. PMI in March

April 5, 2011

Just a tenth of a point separated the U.S. and Euroland service sector purchasing manager readings in March.  That gap was down from 2.9 points in February and 3.5 points in January, and such constituted Euroland’s best relative position in six months.  Germany (60.1) and France (60.4) had significantly better readings than America’s score of 57.3, but Italy (53.3), Ireland (51.1) and Spain (48.7) had much weaker readings.  In the United States, the expansion rates of sales and jobs slowed last month as attested by drops in those components of 7.2 points and 1.9 points respectively.  It appears that Japan’s nuclear facility accident, Middle Eastern turmoil, and higher oil prices hurt non-manufacturing activity in the U.S. economy more than in Europe’s.  On the other hand, inflationary pressures are intensifying more rapidly in Euroland than the United States despite the euro’s strength.  The PMI component for service sector input prices was the highest such has been since August 2008, while the U.S. prices component fell by 1.2 points to 72.1 in the latest reported month. 

The right-most column in the table below adds the U.S. minus euro area PMI spreads in manufacturing and services.  The resulting 3.8 master spread in March was only about half as wide as January’s 7.0.  It was similar to the master spreads from last October and November and identical to the differential one year earlier in March 2010.

PMIs U.S. Ezone   U.S. Ezone   Sum of
  Services Services Spread Mf’g Mf’g Spread Spreads
Feb 2009 42.1 39.2 +2.9 35.7 33.5 +2.2 +5.1
March 41.2 40.9 +0.3 36.4 33.9 +2.5 +2.8
April 43.9 43.8 +0.1 40.4 36.8 +3.6 +3.7
May 44.5 44.8 -0.3 43.2 40.7 +2.5 +2.2
June 46.3 44.7 +1.6 45.3 42.6 +2.7 +4.3
July 46.7 45.7 +1.0 49.1 46.3 +2.8 +3.8
August 48.2 49.9 -1.7 52.8 48.2 +4.6 +2.9
Sept 50.1 50.9 -0.8 52.4 49.3 +3.1 +2.3
October 50.1 52.6 -2.5 55.2 50.7 +4.5 +2.0
November 48.4 53.0 -4.6 53.7 51.2 +2.5 -2.1
December 49.8 53.6 -3.8 54.9 51.6 +3.3 -0.5
Jan 2010 50.5 52.5 -2.0 58.4 52.4 +6.0 +4.0
Feb 52.7 51.8 +0.9 57.1 54.2 +2.9 +3.8
March 54.1 54.1 0.0 60.4 56.6 +3.8 +3.8
April 54.6 55.6 -1.0 59.6 57.6 +2.0 +1.0
May 54.8 56.2 -1.4 57.8 55.8 +2.0 +0.6
June 53.5 55.5 -2.0 55.3 55.6 -0.3 -2.3
July 53.7 55.8 -2.1 55.1 56.7 -1.6 -3.7
August 52.8 55.9 -3.0 55.2 55.1 +0.1 -2.9
Sept 53.9 54.1 -0.2 55.3 53.7 -0.4 -0.6
October 54.6 53.3 +1.3 56.9 54.6 +2.3 +3.6
November 56.0 55.4 +0.6 58.2 55.3 +2.9 +3.5
December 57.1 54.2 +2.9 58.5 57.1 +1.4 +4.3
Jan 2011 59.4 55.9 +3.5 60.8 57.3 +3.5 +7.0
Feb 59.7 56.8 +2.9 61.4 59.0 +2.4 +5.3
March 57.3 57.2 +0.1 61.2 57.5 +3.7 +3.8

Copyright 2011 Larry Greenberg.  All rights reserved.  No secondary distribution without express permission.

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