Tuesday, February 1, 2011

1/02/2011: Ireland's Manufacturing PMI

Boom times arrive in Irish manufacturing - according to the latest NCB Manufacturing PMI for Ireland.

Here are the updated charts and my commentary:
Strong drivers for PMIs in Manufacturing in January 2011 were:
  • New orders (up to 58.8 in January 2011 against 53.2 in December 2010 and 12-mo average of 52.5), driven by New Export Orders (up to 60.3 in January 2011 against 54 in December 2010 and 12-mo average of 56.1).
Headline PMI rose to 55.8 from 52.2 in December signaling strengthening of growth in the sector. On seasonally adjusted basis, January 2011 reading was well ahead of 51.8 average reading for 12 months preceding, and 51.4 average reading for Q4 2010. In Q1 2010 the same average reading was 49.9 (signaling contraction in the sector) and in Q1 2009 it was 35.8 (a veritable disaster!).

A close-up:
Backlogs and inventories:
Again, good performance with all signlas going in the right direction here.

Employment index is now for the second month running showing expansion, which is good news. Bad news - employment index is still relatively weak. But this is the first two-months consecutive expansion signal we had since October-November 2007.

Worrisome trend is on output-input prices gap, which is showing significant inputs price pressures.

Let's take a look at employment figures a bit closer:
You can see the divergence between services and manufacturing PMIs in both core PMIs and employment index.

So mapping the recovery:
Right move, in right direction for manufacturing. Let's hope services surprise on the positive side as well...

It is worth remembering that:
  • Manufacturing sector in Ireland is heavily exports-oriented and as such is less labour-intensive than more domestically-oriented manufacturing in, say, France
  • Manufacturing in Ireland is less labour-intensive than services (which, per December - the latest data due for an update in the next few days - is still tanking)
  • Net effect of manufacturing growth - on employment is negligible, but still great news!

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