Paper Economy - A US Real Estate Bubble Blog: ISM Non-Manufacturing Report on Business: September 2010

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

ISM Non-Manufacturing Report on Business: September 2010

Today, the Institute for Supply Management released their latest Non-Manufacturing Report on Business indicating that service related economic activity continued to expand but at a somewhat slower pace in September.

At 52.80 the business activity index weakened for the fourth consecutive month declining 2.94% since August and sliding 0.75% below the level seen a year earlier, the first year-over-year decline in 14 consecutive months.

It’s important to note though that only 3 of the 11 indicators cited in the report showed slowing growth since August while the "inventories" and “backlog of order” components actually contracted.

Labels: economy, ism, ism nonmanufacturing

1 Comments:

That service-related economic activity has expanded on its face tells us nothing.

Since little gets manufactured in the USA, most of the U.S. economy consists of designing things for manufacture, integrating and installing things already manufactured elsewhere, repairing things already installed, as well as disposing of things already installed.

Numbers without context yield nothing.

Measuring month-over-month or year-over-year deltas for service-related economic activity tells us nothing.

The correct context is how much service-related economic activity should exist given the adult-aged population between 18-61 for a given per capita purchasing power.

Only then can we measure if we're moving toward that or away from it.

By Smack MacDougal, at 12:31 PM