Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Services: Bad to Worse

We already looked at the awful number from the manufacturing survey earlier in the week, now we look at services... and it ain't pretty (per ISM):

"The NMI (Non-Manufacturing Index) registered 37.3 percent in November, 7.1 percentage points lower than the 44.4 percent registered in October, indicating contraction in the non-manufacturing sector for the second consecutive month. The Non-Manufacturing Business Activity Index decreased 11.2 percentage points to 33 percent. The New Orders Index decreased 8.6 percentage points to 35.4 percent, and the Employment Index decreased 10.2 percentage points to 31.3 percent. These are the lowest levels for each of these indexes since they were first reported in 1997.


Don't confuse Inventory Sentiment levels above 50 as a good thing:
The ISM Non-Manufacturing Inventory Sentiment Index decreased 2.5 percentage points to 65 percent in November, indicating that respondents still believe their inventories are too high at this time.

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