Markit Services PMI: "Business Activity Growth Strengthens In November"

The November US Services Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 51.3 percent, up 1.0 from the final October estimate of 50.3. The Investing.com consensus was for 51.6 percent.

Here is the opening from the latest press release:

Commenting on the latest survey results, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit, said:

“With both services and manufacturing reporting stronger rates of expansion, the November PMI surveys indicate the fastest pace of economic growth for four months. The improvement is coming from a low base, however, and even at these higher levels the survey is merely indicative of annualised GDP growth in the region of 1.5%.

“Similarly, while reviving order book growth has encouraging more companies to take on extra staff after two months of net job losses being reported, the survey’s employment index continued to run at a level consistent with monthly jobs growth of only around 100,000.

"Weakened business activity and jobs growth compared to earlier in the year also led to widespread caution with respect to pushing up selling prices in the face of an uncertain outlook. Business expectations for the year ahead continue to run at one of the lowest levels recorded by the survey since 2012 with firms worried about trade wars, slowing economic growth at home and abroad, as well as the possibility of next year’s election cycle causing customers to postpone spending decisions.” [Press Release]

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

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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 the past year, the ISM metric has been significantly the more volatile of the two.

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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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Both series weakened since 2015 and saw an uptick in the latter half of 2016. The interim three-month moving average of the Markit Services index peaked in August of 2014. The ISM index peaked in September of 2015. The two were fairly closely aligned at the beginning of 2016, but they diverged early with the Markit index signaling noticeably weaker growth.