October Business Index Increased 15.5 Percent in a Year’s Time

Registering 57.0 for October, the Gardner Business Index (GBI): Precision Machining made its third month of consecutive gains after a lackluster second quarter. Excluding prior highs from earlier this year, the October reading was higher that readings from any of the past five years. For the year-to-date and 12-month periods, the index increased approximately 6.0 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively. The considerable change in the 12-month period resulted from the 9-month period during which the index changed from being strongly contractionary in July 2016 to strongly expansionary by March of 2017. Gardner Intelligence’s review of the underlying data indicates that production, new orders, and supplier deliveries lifted the business index higher, while backlog, employment and exports pulled the index lower because they grew more slowly than the faster expanding components. 
No components contracted for the month. Exports, which recorded only contractionary readings for the year through August, posted its second, and consecutive, 
expansionary reading in October.