After two down months, the southeastern Wisconsin manufacturing sector returned to growth in September, according to the latest Marquette-ISM Report on Manufacturing.
The Milwaukee-area PMI for September came in at 53.04, up from 48 in August and 49.42 in July. Any reading above 50 suggests the sector is growing.
The index has generally trended down over much of the past year – the six-month average has only increased twice since July 2021 – as the manufacturing sector has contended with a number of headwinds, including supply chain issues, inflation and labor challenges.
Despite the positive number in September, many survey respondents continued to point to similar issues, including issues from the war in Ukraine, increasing production costs, shortages of semiconductors, and difficulty hiring.
Others said that overall production was increasing and while lead times remain an issue, international transportation is improving.
The outlook for business conditions over the next six months also showed some improvement. The outlook diffusion index, which attempts to balance positive and negative bias, went from 28.6% to 44.4%.
The improvement was driven on a number of fronts. The percentage of respondents expecting conditions to get worse dropped from 50% to 44.4% while those expecting things to get better when from 7.1% to 33.3%. The percentage expecting things to remain the same fell from 42.9% to 22.2%.
