020 7898 0500It was quite a busy start to the week for the eurozone, with manufacturing PMI for Germany and the eurozone on the schedule. In the eurozone, the figure for September was 53.2 (against an expectation of of 53.3), while in Germany the figure came in as expected at 53.7.
Retail sales in Germany for August also came in and, on a monthly basis, surprisingly fell by 0.1% when an increase of 0.4% had been expected. Still, year-on-year, the figure came in at 1.6% from 0.9% the previous period – and better than the 1.5% economists had predicted. The euro weakened against the dollar yesterday to continue what has been a miserable few days for the single currency against the greenback. Movements against sterling were fairly muted.
The unemployment rate in the eurozone for August came in at 8.1%. This was in line with expectations and represented a drop from 8.2% the month before. There are no major economic data releases on the schedule for the eurozone, but tomorrow we will see a raft of other PMI data from Germany and the eurozone.
