Well, let's see. More private sector data, some rare earth elements, and pumpkins.

From American public media. This is Marketplace.

I'm Kai Risdahl. It is Monday, today, 3 November. Good as it always is to have you along, everybody.

I'm just going to say, and I am for sure not alone, that while it's one thing to have to figure out what's up with this economy without federal data. We've all gotten used to our private

data favors, after all. It is entirely another thing when those private data points point in opposite

directions. The indicators of choice for us today are both what are called purchasing

managers indexes. They track manufacturing, new orders, and factory production levels,

prices for materials and for finished goods. They're usually pretty good leading indicators,

telling us where the economy and its factories are headed. But the PMI from the Institute

for Supply Management shows an eighth straight month of mild contraction, while the S&P Global PMI shows a third consecutive month of mild improvement.

We asked Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman to spend his day trying to make sense of it all.

Manufacturing is up. Manufacturing is down, and there's no government data to help settle the question.

Looking at it all together, Ned Hill at the Ohio Manufacturing Institute sums it up.

You know, if you'd see me, it'd be shrugging my shoulders going, meh, nothing's really growing.

There's lots of uncertainty. This tariff thing keeps on shifting.

For industrial analyst Jonathan Secreta at CFRA Research, when lots of uncertainty. This tariff thing keeps on shifting.

For industrial analyst Jonathan Secreta at CFRA Research, when two reports that survey corporate purchasing managers come up with opposite conclusions, he goes and finds other economic

sources. Regional Fed banks have been reporting modest improvement in manufacturing, plus

in corporate earnings reports.

The third quarter for a lot of industrial manufacturers, Caterpillar, Deering Co.

Some modest growth there in orders.

All that argues the more positive report from S&P Global hits closer to the mark.

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