January PMI's Show Greater U.S. Than Ezone Improvement
February 4, 2009
| U.S. | Ezone | U.S. | Ezone | Sum of | |||
| Services | Services | Spread | Mf’g | Mf’g | Spread | Spreads | |
| Feb 2008 | 49.7 | 52.3 | -2.6 | 48.8 | 52.3 | -3.5 | -6.1 |
| March | 49.9 | 51.6 | -1.7 | 49.0 | 52.0 | -3.0 | -4.7 |
| April | 51.9 | 52.0 | -0.1 | 48.6 | 50.7 | -2.1 | -2.2 |
| May | 51.2 | 50.6 | +0.6 | 49.3 | 50.6 | -1.3 | -0.7 |
| June | 48.8 | 49.1 | -0.3 | 49.5 | 49.2 | +0.3 | 0.0 |
| July | 49.6 | 48.3 | +1.3 | 49.5 | 47.4 | +2.1 | +3.4 |
| August | 50.4 | 48.5 | +1.9 | 49.3 | 47.6 | +2.1 | +4.0 |
| Sept | 50.0 | 48.4 | 1.6 | 43.4 | 45.0 | -1.6 | 0.0 |
| October | 44.6 | 45.8 | -1.2 | 38.7 | 41.1 | -2.4 | -3.6 |
| November | 37.4 | 42.5 | -5.1 | 36.6 | 35.6 | +1.0 | -4.1 |
| December | 40.1 | 42.1 | -2.0 | 32.9 | 33.9 | -1.0 | -3.0 |
| Jan 2009 | 42.9 | 42.2 | +0.7 | 35.6 | 34.4 | +1.2 | +1.9 |
Economic activity continued to contract in January but not as sharply as in December. In both services and manufacturing, a greater deceleration in the rate of decline occurred in the United States than in the euro area. The columns marked “spread” above show the first differences between U.S. and Euroland PMI readings. The right-most column adds up the spreads for services and manufacturing. There was a six-point rise in that figure between November and January to +1.9. The U.S. situation had not been as much better than Euroland’s since August, that is before the failure of Lehman Brothers. The two economies are now performing fairly similarly, with declining activity in both services and manufacturing. The rates of shrinkage are steepest in manufacturing, which dovetails with very weak trends in exports and industrial production and orders.
Copyright 2009 Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
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