- Inventory easing follows six months of little change.
- Order weakening is led by aircraft.
- Unfilled orders steady, and they remain soft.
- USA| Nov 04 2024
U.S. Factory Inventories & Orders Slip in September
by:Tom Moeller
|in:Economy in Brief
Global| Nov 04 2024
MFG PMIs from S&P Stagnate
On the month, 7 of 18 countries reported weaker manufacturing PMI results than they had the month before. However, the median on a month-to-month basis didn't change at all. Sequentially looking at averages over 12 months, six months and three months, we see the median hasn't changed very much across that span either. It has stayed just below the value of 50, which indicates unchanged output, oscillating between values of 49.6 and 49.7. That's a great deal of consistency for these averages over these three different multi-month segments. All this as global trade growth has come to a halt according to the Baltic trade volume index.
The bottom line is that there isn't really a lot of trend in these overall data and the conditions of economic weakness remain in force although it's weakness of the mildest sort, technically below the value of 50 but - for the most part – these are numeric figures that would round up to a value of 50!
The queue percentile standings show that among these 18 observations, only 6 have values above their historic medians; that would refer to any queue percentile standing value of about 50%. The average percentile standing across all 18 reporting units is at 48.6, again fairly close to breakeven; however, the median value is only at 36.8% - the median is significantly weaker than the average.
As a group, the strongest reporters are the ‘BRIC’ reporters, with queue percentile standings at 54.4% for China, 35.1% for Russia, 73.7% for India, and 61.4% for Brazil. The weakest reporters in the table are Turkey at a 7% standing, France at a 17.5 percentile standing and Indonesia and a 19.3 percentile standing.
Looking at changes since January 2020 when COVID began to emerge, ten of the 18 reporters have even weaker values today than they had in January 2020 while the strongest reporters are Russia 2.7 points higher, India 2.2 points higher, and Brazil 1.9 points higher. No other country has a gain relative to January 2020 any stronger than 0.7 points.
Looking at the breadth of improvement, 66.7% improving compared to where they were 12-months ago; we see 38.9% improving over six months compared to over 12 months and 27.8% improving over three months compared to six months ago. This trend is unnerving, showing smaller, and smaller, proportions of reporters that are doing better than they had been doing over the previous period. And this is not good news even though the diffusion median value hasn't changed very much nor have the various period averages.
- USA| Nov 01 2024
U.S. Payroll Employment Reduced by Storms & Strike During October; Earnings Improve & Jobless Rate Steadies
- Hurricanes close businesses & reduce production.
- Increase in earnings extends trend of improved growth.
- Unchanged jobless rate remains below July peak.
by:Tom Moeller
|in:Economy in Brief
- USA| Nov 01 2024
U.S. Light Vehicle Sales Rise Modestly in October
- Light truck purchases improve, but auto sales decline.
- Total domestic vehicle sales increase; imports are little changed.
- Imports' market share slips.
by:Tom Moeller
|in:Economy in Brief
- USA| Nov 01 2024
U.S. ISM Manufacturing Index Eases in October
- Index down sharply from March high.
- Production & inventories indexes lead decline, orders & employment rise.
- Prices reading improves.
by:Tom Moeller
|in:Economy in Brief
- September construction spending +0.1% m/m (+4.6% y/y); August and July revised up.
- Residential private construction +0.2% m/m, led by a 0.4% rebound in single-family building.
- Nonresidential private construction -0.1% m/m, down for the second month in three.
- Public sector construction +0.5% m/m, reflecting m/m rises in both residential & nonresidential public buildings.
- Europe| Nov 01 2024
EMU Unemployment Is Still at a Low Level and Easing
Unemployment remains low in the euro area in September. It is tied for its all-time record low since the union was formed. So, the ranking of the rate is in its 0.3-percentile that says it has been this low or lower only 0.3% of the time. That is much lower than for any EMU member in the table. The lowest ranking (highest standing) in the table is Italy at 1.6% followed by Ireland at 7.4%. The reason the EMU rate ranks so much lower is that it is the confluence of all these low unemployment rates that is unusual making the EMU-wide rate even lower.
Trends The sequential trends from 12-month to 6-months to 3-months shows five of 12 countries in the table with falling rates of unemployment. Only four show unemployment falling on balance over six months with one having unemployment unchanged. Five have unemployment unchanged over three months as well. This shows the trend for unemployment rate to fall is still in place and that may seem surprising given the weakness in some of the recent economic data from Europe. Of course, one reason for this is also that Europe’s large economy Germany has its unemployment rate rising over 12 months and six months and it is on a different trend that the EMU area- that seems unsustainable.
Over the most recent three months, we see the unemployment rate falls in six countries month-to-month in August compared to only three in September. September has five countries with the unemployment rate rising that compares to only three in August.
The labor market trends may be running out of gas as far as lowing the unemployment rate is concerned. Still, the ECB is still cutting rates to provide economic support. But the labor trend does not show decay sequentially. The annualized monthly drops are all in the same ballpark for 12-month, 6-month, and 3-month changes. But the situation with Germany needs to be resolved since it will be hard for the euro area to perform well if Germany can’t.
Global| Oct 31 2024
Charts of the Week: Data, Policy and Politics
Some unexpected resilience in the US economy and particularly in the labour market has continued to reinforce soft landing narratives over the past few days. At the broader global level, weaker-than-expected inflation data have also been reinforcing the view that most major central banks will continue to loosen monetary policy in the period ahead. In our charts this week we illustrate how this soft landing narrative continues to shape sentiment in financial markets (see charts 1 and 2). But we illustrate too, that notwithstanding US resilience, latest forward looking business surveys suggest that global growth is losing momentum. Domestic policy and politics, however, have also been important in recent days with the new UK labour government’s first budget dominating the headlines (chart 4). Some uncertainty has additionally crept into Japan’s political scene and generated some financial market consequences (chart 5). Finally, and looking ahead to next week, US politics has continued to dominate the global headlines and may well be a key driver of economic and financial market outcomes in the period immediately ahead (chart 6).
by:Andrew Cates
|in:Economy in Brief
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