PMI data shows a mixed picture for businesses, and mixed emotions
We got some fresh data Monday about how companies are doing and how they’re feeling. The S&P Global Purchasing Managers Index is based on surveys of folks at firms across the U.S. According to a preview, the index rose in March but paints a picture of a divided economy based on how it’s doing now and how it thinks it will be doing in the future.
If you ask businesses in the service economy — the diners and hair salons — how they are doing in March, they generally say better than January and February, which were terrible. Terrible because of terrible weather — polar vortexes, snowstorms in the South.
“You know, your tourism sectors and restaurants and so forth. Just people not wanting to go out,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence. S&P Global puts out the PMI. So in March, the weather got better and service businesses did better.
“Manufacturing is a complete opposite,” said Williamson.
Companies in the manufacturing side of the economy had a great start to the year. “They were ramping up production to get shipments out ahead of any possible tariffs,” he said.
That bump’s over. In March, manufacturing sank back into the swamp of malaise and periodic contraction it’s been in for more than two years. The cost of inputs for manufacturers is at a 31-month high — see tariffs. But despite all that, manufacturers in March were the most optimistic about the future that they’ve been in years.
“That reflects this more protectionist environment that manufacturers are saying, hey in the long run this is gonna help us,” said Williamson.
Ryan Sweet, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, is not so sure that it will.
“Tariffs, they’re going to cut into economic activity and the dollar is likely going to appreciate, which doesn’t really bode well for U.S. manufacturers,” said Sweet.
Tariff anxiety did help sour the mood in the service economy, though. That and the cooling labor market and slowing wage growth. “When that occurs, it’s not a great barometer for what’s ahead for services,” he said.
And confidence there around how this year will go fell to its lowest level since 2022. The service economy employs more than 80% of workers in the U.S.