U.S. Minus Euro Area Services PMI Spread Swings Into Black
March 3, 2010
The relative positions of the U.S. and Euroland economies remained little changed in February as seen in the right-most column of the table below. Reported manufacturing PMIs on Monday revealed a sharply diminished U.S. advantage, in part reflecting the lagged effect of euro depreciation on competitiveness. Service-sector purchasing manager indices out today show an offsetting trend, with the spread between them shifting from a European advantage of 2.0 points in January to a U.S. advantage of 1.2 points in February. Growth rates between manufacturing and services have converged in the United States but diverged in Europe. Within services, the U.S. improvement was concentrated in gains of 4.0 points in jobs and 2.6 points in production. Germany’s service sector PMI rose by a solid 1.1 points, but the indices of France and Spain fell by 2.4 points and 1.7 points. Ireland’s index improved 4.4 points but, like Spain’s, remained under 50, thus connoting a contractionary direction.
| 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 | 53.0 | 51.8 | +1.2 | 56.5 | 54.2 | +2.3 | +3.5 |
Copyright Larry Greenberg 2010. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: Service PMIs
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