Economy in Brief

The European monetary union’s index of sentiment created by the European Commission rose sharply in October to its highest level since April 2023. There were improvements in the three of the five sector indexes reported with only construction and services unchanged in October relative to their September values.

Despite the nice step-up in the indexes in October, they are still at relatively low values. Only two sectors, construction and retailing, have readings above their 50th percentiles with construction at a 77.5 percentile standing and retailing at a 51.5 percentile standing. The service sector has a low 27.5 percentile standing, consumer confidence is at a 24.3 percentile standing, and the industrial sector is at a 35.9 percentile. Data are ranked over observations back to 1990, where feasible.

‘Better’ is not always ‘good’ Clearly the euro area is not performing particularly well at this time. The rankings data make that especially clear. The service sector and the industrial sector are substantially below their historic medians. The median occurs at a queue (or rank) standing at the 50-percentile mark. Consumer confidence is in the lower 25-percentile of its range for this period; services are in their 27th percentile – a low ranking for such an important job creating sector.

The largest have the best October showing The four largest economies in the euro area lead the way in the month and on the broader trip to mediocrity. Germany, France, and Italy each rise by one percentage point or more in October. More broadly, Italy and Spain are the only two ‘large economies’ with percentile standings above their respective 50th percentiles: Spain is at a 55.3 percentile standing, Italy at a 50.9 percentile standing. The largest two economies in the monetary union, Germany and France, respectively, have standings at the 19th percentile for Germany in the 33rd percentile for France.

Granular performance of the Euro Area In October only one large economy backtracked compared to September and that's Spain; its hard decline of 0.9% came after its index rose by 2.9% in September. Among the remaining 14 economies, seven of them showed declines in October and seven of them showed increases. The pickup and performance for the monetary union in October is substantially on the back of the larger economies that are doing better while these smaller monetary union members are clearly mixed.

Standings In terms of standings, the smaller monetary union economies show 5 of 14 with standings above their 50th percentile. These are Portugal at 51.5%, Cyprus at 56.2%, Lithuania at 64.4%, Greece at 71.1%, and Malta at a strong 89.1%.

Summing up It is a good month statistically for the euro area. However, the gains are not widespread, and the sector performance is still mixed. But this is the strongest level for the EU sentiment index since April 2023, and that is something.