Swiss May manufacturing PMI rose to 34.7 from 32.6 in March. This was not quite as strong as the 35.0 we had been looking for, but a clear improvement. The output reading improved to 32.9 from 30.3 and the reading for the backlog of orders jumped to 37.3 from 29.8. PMI stabilized last month and the improvement in April suggests that confidence is bottoming out, which is good news, even though the overall reading remains firmly in negative territory, thus indicating ongoing contraction in the manufacturing sector. In this environment unemployment continues to rise and the employment reading dropped to 31.9 from 37.5 in the previous month.
Al Bawaba
