US Manufacturing Activity Is Steady

The final reading for November came in at 54.8, better than the 54.7 flash reading but below expectations for a 55.0.

The flash reading, however, marked a 10-month low for US manufacturing activity.

According to Markit's release, "Business conditions continued to improve across the US manufacturing sector in November, but the pace of recovery eased to its weakest since the start of 2014."

This was the third month that manufacturing output slowed, with the November survey showing the weakest pace of manufacturing expansion since January.

In November, new export orders also slowed by the most since June 2013.

Commenting on the report, Markit's Chris Williamson said that, "[W]ith inflows of new orders slowing sharply, there's a good chance that production growth will deteriorate further in December. The principal cause of the order book slowdown is a renewed downturn in export orders, which fell for the first time since January."

Williamson added that, "Demand from many emerging markets remains well down on pre-crisis levels, and a deteriorating situation in the Eurozone has hit trade flows to Europe. Unless order book growth picks up, factories will inevitably soon turn to cutting jobs in order to bring capacity down in line with weaker demand."

Here's the headline chart from Markit.