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The Australian Industry Group’s services PMI for March is out today and shows continued improvement albeit at a slowing pace, up 1.1 points to 49.6 and on the verge of expansion:
The internals are not quite so encouraging. The sectoral split shows that penny-pinching food is still dominating activity:
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And new orders did not improve from last month:
And although employment tipped into positive territory, the trend is nothing to do backflips over:
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Indeed, a glance at the internals generally shows a distinct pattern of slowing in the second derivative:
This release rather suggests that after the January and February party apparent in retail sales, sobriety returned in March.
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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.