Owing to the May Day holiday around the world and our publishing schedule, we don’t yet have all the data for the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for manufacturing, published by S&P Global. However, the UK results are mixed with the index coming out higher than the flash estimate but still significantly negative.
Last week, we reported the flash estimate for the UK manufacturing PMI was 44.0 but the final figure released yesterday was 45.4 – this is also an increase compared to the March reading of 44.9 (and was the lowest global figure). While there is a glimmer of good news in this significant improvement compared to the flash figure – probably caused by an easing of sentiment over the data collection period – it is still a long way short of the expansion / contraction threshold of 50. It is not even back to the February level and, apart from the March reading, is the weakest since October 2023.
Output contracted at a slightly slower, but still significant, pace than in March, with a similar picture for total new orders. The latter was driven largely by export demand declining at the fastest rate for nearly 5 years (during the Covid-pandemic); demand from the USA, Europe and China all fell. Employment in the manufacturing sector fell for the 6th consecutive month and the pace of job losses accelerated to its second fastest rate in the last 5 years. Finally, the index was helped up by longer delivery times caused by supplier constraints, supply chain issues (including freight delays) and market uncertainty.
In the Euro-zone, the manufacturing sector PMI also improved compared to March and, at 49.0, is at its highest level since August 2022, while still indicating a mild rate of contraction in activity. Despite this, there was a mix of trends among the 8 countries included in this region; there was a sharp improvement in the still negative reading for Italy, accompanied by marginally better figures in France and Germany; Ireland also improved its positive reading to their highest level since June 2022. On the other hand, the manufacturing PMI slipped further into negative territory in Spain, the Netherlands and Austria, while Greece also saw its positive reading fall back.
The improvement in the overall Euro-zone PMI came as the output element accelerated its rate of growth to the fastest pace for over 3 years. However, this was despite another reduction in new orders, which were dragged down by export markets (including within the region). Employment, which will often lag the cycle, also fell, but at a slower rate and, perhaps most noticeably, confidence weakened to its lowest level so far in 2025 in the face of US tariffs and global economic weakness.
Among the other EU countries who have a PMI survey, the negative readings in Czechia and Romania improved compared to the March reading, as did the already positive value for Sweden; the outlier this month is Poland where their PMI fell to 50.2, although this is still just the positive side of the threshold.
Elsewhere in Europe, Switzerland saw the sharpest reduction so far in this report with the index falling to 45.8 – their lowest since July 2024 – while Turkiye was unchanged at 47.3; Kazakhstan reported a lower but still positive reading at 51.2.
India continues to lead the way in Asia (and globally) with their reading of 58.2 only a smidgeon above the March reading, while Japan saw their manufacturing PMI edge up to 48.7. Elsewhere in the region, the positive values for Australia (51.7) and China (50.4) were both lower than in March, while South Korea (47.5) and Taiwan (47.8) had noticeably lower negative readings.
For the Americas, we only have data for Canada and the USA at hand at the time of writing this report. The USA saw an unchanged figure of 50.2 but the modest reduction for Canada to 45.3 means that they have the lowest manufacturing sector PMI among the countries for whom the April data is available (this is fractionally lower than the UK level).
The individual S&P Global PMI reports are available to download on their web-site at https://www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Release/PressReleases but we also have a summary charts report which is available to download below – this is labelled as draft as there are still a few countries to publish their data, either this afternoon or on Monday, so we will update the report next week. You should note that the PMI readings for Hungary, Sweden and Switzerland are not compiled by S&P Global but can be found with an appropriate internet search (it also means that they are not part of the global PMI calculation).