By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Taking a look at ISM manufacturing data for May, PMI coming in at 48.5, representing the third consecutive month of contraction, the number declining slightly compared to April’s 48.7 reading. Here to break down the full report. We’ve got Susan Spence, ISM manufacturing business survey committee chair. Susan, great to speak with you this morning. Talk to me about your takeaway here, just a little bit of a contraction in this headline number.
00:24 Susan Spence
Griffin, thank you and thanks for having me on. I do appreciate it. Um, uh, not surprisingly, we’ve dropped another 0.2 percentage points. Uh, the analysis we’re doing is seeing a continued weakening of demand, um, you know, backlog, export order, new export orders, uh, which were down down about 3 percentage points. Um, new orders down, not not a surprise. Uh, customer inventory, the other piece of demand, uh, still pretty low, and we think that’s positive. Customers have to reorder at some point. Uh, but really, um, for the six biggest month, uh, six months, sorry, um, the biggest concern with the panelists remains tariffs. Um, 86% of our panelists mentioned that in their headline con, uh, comments. The sentiment this month, for every positive comment, there were over five negative comments about the tariffs. You could read it in the report. People are worried. Um, I’m seeing, uh, comments comparing it to COVID, saying it’s worse. And having lived through that as a procurement executive, uh, didn’t think I would see that at some point. So, they remain those concerns. Um, production and employment had a little bit slower contraction, but it is certainly still contracting. So, um, we continue to see layoffs happening. Um, we have a, um, hiring versus what we call force manage, uh, about for, you know, for every person hiring, there’s one and a half. That’s worse than last month, people that are, um, not replacing folks or laying off. Yeah. So,
03:00 Speaker A
Yeah. Well, no, Susan, I do. I wanted to follow up on that because that’s really interesting because the employment number to me looked like a potential bright spot of silver lining within the report, but then I hear you saying perhaps when you look even more under the hood, it’s it’s not. Talk to me about the takeaway from this month’s data on employment specifically.
03:27 Susan Spence
Sure, sure. So, you know, um, it’s difficult, but we we we know companies need to look at their cost structure. And if that demand is not coming in and production is low, they need to do something. Uh, rather attrition, not backfill someone, then have to lay somebody off. The fact is, both are happening, and layoffs are happening at a greater rate than the other two. So, um, with the uncertainty, at least my experience in almost 38 years in the business world is, with uncertainty, you do not hire people because you don’t want to have to turn around and let them go. Um, so there’s price uncertainty, there’s supply uncertainty, suppliers are taking longer to deliver their product. We think that’s still a hangover from port congestion, but it’s also likely due to not understanding who’s going to pay for tariffs and wondering if they’re even going to happen.