Manufacturing Industry Shows Unexpected Decline
Posted at 2:24 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2012
The ISM Manufacturing Index showed an unexpected contraction in the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) measurement of manufacturing activity at 49.5% in November, below the consensus expectation of 51.7%. A measurement below 50% shows contraction.
Cullen Roche: “This is the first official contraction reading since last August. Clearly, the economy remains in this sort of stagnant phase. The underlying data was even weaker than the headline figure with employment and new orders declining substantially. The good news is that we’ve seen these readings in the recent past and they were consistent with a stagnant economy and not a collapsing economy. The bad news is that the economy remains way too weak to bring down unemployment by any substantial amount.”
