About the PMIs

Purchasing Managers’ Indices (PMIs) have been specially developed to provide economic analysts, purchasing professionals, business decision-makers and policy makers with accurate and timely data to help better understand business conditions. In particular:

• central banks in many countries use the data to help make interest rate decisions;
• analysts in the financial markets use PMI data to reliably forecast official data such as GDP;
• forecasters and planners in the corporate sector use the PMIs to help anticipate changing business conditions and to benchmark performance.

The indices are based on monthly questionnaire surveys of carefully selected companies which provide an advance indication of what is really happening in the private sector economy by tracking changes in variables such as output, new orders, stock levels, employment and prices across the manufacturing, construction, retail and service sectors.

Derived indicators also help signal changes in capacity utilisation, productivity and GDP.

Key features of PMI data:

• All series provide accurate factual data rather than opinion, expectations or confidence measurements.
• Data cover almost all private sector economic activity in many countries (including the all-important service sectors).
• Data are produced using the same methodology in all countries where we operate, enabling accurate international comparisons.
• The new flash PMIs further enhance the PMIs’ reputation as the first economic indicators for each month, providing accurate evidence of changing economic conditions well ahead of comparable government statistics.

Data accuracy

The PMI surveys have become one of the most authoritative sources of economic data.

The chart below provides an example to illustrate the accuracy of the PMI as an advance indicator of official economic statistics, in this case our Eurozone Manufacturing PMI data charted against official data from Eurostat on Eurozone industrial production.

As a result of their unmatched accuracy and timeliness, the surveys achieve considerable press coverage on a regular basis and are highly regarded by economists.

"There are a huge number of monthly indicators we use to try to predict ECB rate changes... we found the whole-economy PMI was the best leading indicator of ECB rate decisions."

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