PMPA Business Trends October 2024
Our October 2024 sales and hours scheduled performance certainly surprised to the upside, while our four sentiment indicators all turned strongly downward. October sales showed the most volatility all year- to the upside- while average hours worked grew as well in order to deal with the unexpected increase in demand. The Precision Machined Products Association’s Sales Index in October 2024 outperformed both the Fed’s Industrial Production and Manufacturing Production indicators. Our increase over the prior month’s sales (11 points or 7.2%) was greater than the range that our sales indicator had remained in all year (9 points). Despite the negative forward-looking sentiments- which we attribute to both pre-election anxiety and normal seasonal slowdown expectations- we remain on track to be within 2 percent of the end-of-the-year forecast for sales that we made in April 2024. The divergence of the monthly and three-month moving average from the 12-month moving average for sales gives us business confidence. There is an assignable cause…
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