{"id":434621,"date":"2026-07-24T15:14:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/euro-area-business-activity-rises-for-first-time-in-four-months-as-demand-conditions-rebound-434621\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T15:14:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:14:18","slug":"euro-area-business-activity-rises-for-first-time-in-four-months-as-demand-conditions-rebound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/euro-area-business-activity-rises-for-first-time-in-four-months-as-demand-conditions-rebound-434621\/","title":{"rendered":"Euro area business activity rises for first time in four months as demand conditions rebound"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li>July flash services PMI 51.6 vs 49.8 expected<\/li>\n<li>Prior 49.4<\/li>\n<li>July flash manufacturing PMI 52.0 vs 51.5 expected<\/li>\n<li>Prior 51.4<\/li>\n<li>July flash composite PMI 51.9 vs 50.3 expected<\/li>\n<li>Prior 50.3<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">It&#8217;s all good news for the euro area economy to start Q3, with better readings across both the services and manufacturing sectors. Overall business activity expanded further with the services print being a 5-month high and manufacturing print a 3-month high. On the latter, the manufacturing output index even shot up to a 52-month high and underscores the recovery especially in the German scene.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">The rise in output in July was in line with a renewed increase<br \/>\nin new orders, the first in five months. Although modest, the<br \/>\nrate of growth was the fastest since April 2023.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">Adding to the more positive picture is\u00a0a first increase in employment in 2026<br \/>\nso far, although the rate of job creation was only marginal at best. And on the price front,\u00a0the rate of input cost inflation<br \/>\nslowed in July and was the lowest since February. That being said,<br \/>\ninput prices continued to rise sharply during the month. So, it&#8217;s not quite a signal that price pressures are changing course just yet. And even more so now since the Middle East conflict is starting back up again.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">S&amp;P Global notes that:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">&#8220;July is seeing a welcome revival of economic activity in the<br \/>\neurozone, but a volatile geopolitical environment means it<br \/>\nremains to be seen if the good news can last.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\u201cAfter a largely stagnant second quarter, there has been<br \/>\nsomething of a bounce in demand during July which<br \/>\ntakes the PMI up to a level indicative of GDP growing at a<br \/>\nreasonably solid 0.3% quarterly pace. This represents the<br \/>\nbest performance since the outbreak of the war in the Middle<br \/>\nEast with manufacturing enjoying its strongest growth spurt<br \/>\nsince early-2022 and services buoyed by a solid rebound in<br \/>\nactivity after three months of decline. Germany is reporting<br \/>\ngrowth for the first time in four months, France\u2019s downturn<br \/>\nhas softened to the weakest since February, and the rest of<br \/>\nthe region as a whole is growing at a pace not seen since last<br \/>\nNovember as its order book inflows jumped to a degree not<br \/>\nbeaten in over four years.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\u201cThe improving picture also spreads to the labour market,<br \/>\nwhere companies reported the first rise in payroll numbers so<br \/>\nfar this year as business growth expectations revived to the<br \/>\nhighest since February.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\u201cCost pressures have meanwhile cooled sharply and are<br \/>\nnow down to their lowest since the outbreak of the war in<br \/>\nFebruary, helping moderate the rate of inflation for selling<br \/>\nprices across goods and services. This will take pressure off<br \/>\nthe ECB in terms of any imminent need for further rate hikes.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\u201cHowever, whether all this good news can be sustained in<br \/>\nthe coming months largely depends on the situation in the<br \/>\nMiddle East. With oil prices on the rise again in recent days<br \/>\nand shipping worries escalating, there\u2019s a danger that the<br \/>\neconomy could relapse if inflationary pressures intensify<br \/>\nagain and supply disruptions, notably for energy, derail this<br \/>\nnascent upturn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\" class=\"text-align-justify\">\n<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July flash services PMI 51.6 vs 49.8 expected Prior 49.4 July flash manufacturing PMI 52.0 vs 51.5 expected Prior 51.4 July flash composite PMI 51.9 vs 50.3 expected Prior 50.3 It&#8217;s all&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-434621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}