The US manufacturing PMIs are important signals of industrial activity. These surveys look at the observations and expectations of operating officers at firms across the country and assess different aspects of their businesses. PMIs are key macroeconomic indicators for two reasons:

  1. They provide an aggregated look at the microeconomics of manufacturing firms.
  2. They provide an accelerated view of hard macro data like manufacturing output and GDP well before those releases come out.

PMI surveys ask managers about many aspect of their business including new order flows, production levels, employment changes, inventory management, pricing trends, and supplier deliveries times. A diffusion index is calculated from the responses and scaled from 0 (or 50) with positive values (or values above 50) indicating expansion in that category and negative values (or values below 50) indicating contraction. For the purpose of this review of the various manufacturing PMIs, reports that are centered around 50 have been adjusted to be centered at 0.

The following PMIs are including in this review:

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/RheZH/2/

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/SS9s0/1/

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/R2QFY/5/