Updating our notes from last week on the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for manufacturing (published by S&P Global) for April, we note that the global average fell to 49.8 – this is its first negative reading in 2025. Although output increased, new orders, employment and purchasing of stocks fell.
The other element of the PMI calculation is suppliers delivery times and the global report notes that these added positively to the index; however, this was because they lengthened which is taken to be a sign of increasing activity when, in fact, this is likely to have occurred because of shipping delays and supply chain disruption (although the report is silent on this subject), so the underlying position is a little weaker than the PMI value suggests.
The increase in output is not entirely good news either because it came in the consumer and intermediate goods sub-sectors, with production unchanged compared to April for investment goods. The fall in new orders was the first for 4 months and largely concentrated in export activity which declined at the sharpest pace since August 2023. While the North American nations were the hardest hit with substantial reductions in export orders, it was the UK which registered the sharpest overall contraction on this measure.
For the other figures that we were missing last week, the ASEAN region slipped below the 50 threshold for the first time since December 2023 and to its lowest reading (48.7) since August 2021. Hungary also had a lower reading than in March but in this case, at 50.2, it just managed to remain positive.
This experience was shared by Brazil where the manufacturing PMI slipped back to 50.3 but the other two countries on this continent had different experiences. Columbia (51.4) moved back into positive territory for the first time in 3 months but Mexico saw its already negative value weaken even further to 44.8.
Among the 29 countries and 2 regions (this excludes the global average) that we cover in our report, only 13 had manufacturing PMI’s in positive territory (i.e. above 50). Although not directly comparable in terms of levels (the direction is reasonably reliable), the strongest overall reading was in India (58.2) and the weakest in Mexico (44.8); in terms of the change from the March figures, the largest reduction was in Switzerland (-3.1 points) and the most significant improvement was in neighbouring Italy (+2.7 points).
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 has been updated and now includes all the countries/regions that we cover. 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).