Industry Growth Flattens

With a reading of 49.5, the August Metalworking Business Index showed that the metalworking industry contracted for the second month in a row, but the two months of contraction were extremely shallow. The index works by comparing the current month’s activity to previous month’s activity, so August’s index is saying that overall, the metalworking industry is performing at a level just below the peak activity of this cycle. Also, the graphs for the overall index and subindices had been declining for five or six months. However, the downward trend line in each graph appears to have broken in August. We will need to see a couple more months of data before that call can be made definitively.