January Markit Services PMI: Rise in Business

The January US Services Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 51.2 percent, down from the final December estimate of 57.6.

Here is the opening from the latest press release:

US Sector PMI™ indices are compiled from responses to questionnaires sent to purchasing managers in IHS Markit's US manufacturing and services PMI survey panels, covering over 1,000 private sector companies. Indices are available for the basic materials, consumer goods, consumer services, financials, healthcare, industrials and technology sectors. [Press Release]

Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012.

Here is an overlay with the equivalent PMI survey conducted by the Institute for Supply Management, which they refer to as "Non-Manufacturing" (see our full article on this series here). Over its history, the ISM metric has been significantly the more volatile of the two.

The next chart uses a three-month moving average of the two rather volatile series to facilitate our understanding of the current trend. Since early in 2016, the ISM metric has shown stronger growth than the Markit counterpart.

 

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