CHICAGO, June 29 (Xinhua) -- The Chicago Business Barometer, also known as Chicago Purchasing Manager Index (Chicago PMI), rose 1.4 points to 64.1 in June from 62.7 in May, hitting the highest level since January.
The Chicago PMI is considered to be a leading indicator of the U.S. economy. It is made up of the production, new orders, order backlogs, employment and supplier deliveries indicators and is designed to predict future changes in U.S. gross domestic product.
Partially spurring the barometer's rise was a pick-up in orders, up for a second straight month to a five-month high, according to MNI Indicators, who published the Chicago PMI with the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago.
Offsetting this was a slight fall in output growth, said MNI Indicators on Friday, adding production lost ground for the fourth time since peaking in December, due to issues in supply chain.
With demand growth recapturing some lost momentum, firms' unfulfilled orders continued to grow. The order backlogs indicator built on last month' s sizable gain with another in June, to sit 11.4 percent higher versus June 2017 and 10.8 percent higher in the second quarter than its first quarter average.
The other two indicators, supplier deliveries and employment, both rose in June.
"Stronger outturns in May and June left the MNI Chicago Business Barometer broadly unchanged in Q2, running at a pace similar to that seen throughout 2017, while impressive, supply-side frustrations are undermining firms' productive capacity," said Jamie Satchi, economist at MNI Indicators.
