New Australian monthly economic activity index released

The national employer association Australian Industry (Ai) Group is pleased to announce the launch next week of a new monthly indicator of business performance covering a cross section of industry sectors to be known as the Ai Group Australian Industry Index.

The first release of the Ai Group Australian Industry Index will be on Tuesday 7 February, with following releases available on the first working Tuesday of each month (or the following working day if the Tuesday is a national holiday).

For three decades, Ai Group has been the leading national provider of business activity indicators, through our flagship Australian PMI (manufacturing) and Australian PCI (construction) and Australian PSI (services).

In 2023, the Ai Group is integrating and extending its business indicators, to provide a one-stop-shop for information on the performance of Australian industry.

The Ai Group Australian Industry Index is representative of the modern industrial ecosystem. It brings together the manufacturing, construction, engineering, technology and business services sectors –  industries, which together account for 36% of the Australian economy.

The Ai Group Australian Industry Index provides decision-makers immediate data on how the economy is performing. Based on a monthly survey of several hundred businesses, and released in under a week from data collection, it allows near real-time tracking of industry performance.

The Ai Group Australian Industry Index tracks nine different industry activity metrics:  production, employment, new orders, input purchases, exports, capacity utilisation, input prices, selling prices and wages. This enables the early identification of leading trends – for example, a rise in new orders that will eventually flow onto greater production, employment and exports.

The Ai Group Australian Industry Index tracks business performance in two industry sectors and five industry subsectors, allowing dynamics within different Australian industries to be analysed.

The core results of the Ai Group Australian Industry Index will be released in a free report to the public. Users requiring more fine-grained performance metrics can subscribe to access the full dataset.

Recognising the heritage and importance of the Australian PMI and Australia PCI, both will continue as sub-indicators available within the Ai Group Australian Industry Index, however, there will no longer be separate release dates for these indexes.