The Manufacturing Sector and PMIs: Growth Slows, But So Does Contraction

Over the past 24 hours, the Markit Group, a financial information services company, has released the latest data on the manufacturing sectors of various world economies. Here’s what’s going on:

Mexico’s manufacturing sector is still growing, but at a far slower pace than it was in May. The U.S., like Mexico, is still growing, but at a slower pace.

On the other hand, in many European countries, like France, Germany, Spain and Italy, the manufacturing sector is shrinking but at a much slower pace than before. China too falls under this category.

The manufacturing sector in Brazil was contracting in May 2012, but now it appears to be growing, though at a fairly slow pace.

Here’s how the Purchasing Managers Index works: Every month Markit conducts surveys of private sector companies in more than 30 countries and determines at what rate the manufacturing sector in each of those countries is growing or shrinking, known as the Purchasing Managers Index, or PMI.

The manufacturing sector of each country is rated on an index, in which 50 indicates no growth or contraction. A number below 50 indicates that the manufacturing sector of that country is shrinking, and the lower the number, the faster the rate of contraction. A number above 50 indicates growth, and the higher the number, the faster the rate of growth.

International Business Times took the latest PMI numbers--results of the May 2013 survey that were released over the past 24 hours, compared them to the PMI numbers from a year ago, and mapped out how 26 countries are doing now compared to May 2012. A shade of red indicates that country is performing worse than it was a year ago, a shade of green indicates improvement.