Today is a good example of how different business survey methodologies can produce very different results.

Let's have a look at new orders at UK manufacturers...
1/

First - the IHS Markit/CIPS UK Manufacturing PMI.

The question put to factories:

Are your company's new orders higher, the same or lower than one month ago?

Latest survey shows reports of rising orders are more frequent than at any time since Nov '17.

2/

Next - the CBI's Industrial Trends Survey's monthly order book balance.

The question here is more interpretative than the PMI - are orders above normal? Below?

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The result this month - the picture of new orders is still pretty bad. Nothing like the rapid recovery shown in the PMI.

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You can put the two together.

PMI is telling us what should be obvious - there is growth, fairly fast growth, in new orders vs last month. Well, duh! The economy is reopening.

But it tells us nothing about the levels.

5/

CBI survey doesn't tell us about levels either in any quantitative sense.

But it does at least say a solid majority of factories still see new orders below normal.

As the CBI says, the sector is still "severely depressed" - which you would not know from glancing at the PMI
6/6

Here our look at the CBI survey today... https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-cbi/uk-manufacturing-remains-severely-depressed-cbi-survey-shows-idUKKBN25H15E