Purchasing Managers' Index
A summary of purchasing managers' answers about orders, output, inventories and hiring, built around the dividing line between growth and contraction.
How to read the number
It is a survey, not a measurement, and its value is speed: it arrives before official statistics and answers whether conditions got better or worse.
When the metric lies
It says nothing about magnitude — the answer better than last month reads identically for a marginal improvement and a booming one.
Also known as: purchasing managers index