2023-10-24 15:28:21
US corporate activity rose this October, with the manufacturing sector emerging from a five-month contraction thanks to a rise in new orders, and services activity accelerating modestly amid signs of easing inflationary pressures.
Standard & Poor’s Global said on Tuesday that its preliminary composite purchasing managers’ index in the United States, which tracks the manufacturing and services sectors, rose to 51.0 points in October, from last September’s final reading of 50.2 points, and this is the highest level since. Last July.
This is the latest sign that the US economy is able to withstand the continued rise in interest rates stimulated by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign to curb inflation.
Growth continued throughout the year, even as most economists expected – until recently – that the Federal Reserve’s 5.25 percentage point interest rate hike since March 2022 would lead to a recession and higher unemployment rates.
Later this week, the Commerce Department will present a scorecard of economic activity for the third quarter, with economists polled by Archyde.com estimating that GDP growth was the fastest in nearly two years in the July-September period.
The Standard & Poor’s Global report indicates that the momentum has continued into the fourth quarter of the year.
Chris Williamson, chief business economist at Standard & Poor’s Global Markets Intelligence, said in a statement that “hopes for a soft landing for the US economy will be supported by the improvement in the situation that we witnessed in October.”
The Standard & Poor’s Global Purchasing Managers’ Index survey has been among the most pessimistic economic indicators in recent months, so the improvement in US production growth noted at the beginning of the fourth quarter is good news.
The survey’s manufacturing PMI rose to a break-even level of 50 points, its highest level since April, and interrupts the shallow contraction in the sector that began in May.
The average forecast among economists polled by Archyde.com was 49.5 points. New manufacturing orders also rose for the first time in six months, and were the highest since September 2022.
On the services side, which has a large proportion of the economy, activity also defied expectations of a modest slowdown, as the Purchasing Managers’ Index for this sector reached the highest level in three months at 50.9 points this month, compared to 50.1 points in September, and once morest the average Archyde.com poll estimate of 50.1 points in September. 49.8 points.
In a development that will be welcomed by Federal Reserve policymakers in their battle once morest inflation, service sector cost inputs grew at their slowest pace in three years, while service providers increased prices by the smallest margin since the spring of 2020, shortly following the outbreak of the Corona virus pandemic. ».
Williamson said: “The survey’s selling price measure is now close to its long-term average before the pandemic, and is consistent with headline inflation falling near the (Federal Reserve) target of 2 percent in the coming months, something that appears likely to be achieved without output falling to… The contraction side.
Inflation has declined significantly since it peaked in June 2022, but the downward path has been uneven over the past few months, and Fed officials are concerned that service price pressures have been particularly persistent.
Other recent data showed progress on this front, with the “super core” measure of inflation – the costs of services excluding energy and housing – rising last August at the lowest rate in 13 months. The Ministry of Commerce will announce the September rate on Friday.
As positive as the recent data may be for the economic outlook, Williamson said that the recent escalation of tension in the Middle East represents a downside risk to growth, and an upside risk to inflation.
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