US S&P Global Composite PMI Final (Aug) 56.0 vs. Exp. 56.0 (Prev. 54.5)

The informational value here is therefore in the composition rather than the headline: momentum rotating from manufacturing toward services, with services expansion at its strongest in some time while factory output and new orders cool, is the sequence that has tended to accompany late-cycle resilience in past episodes, since services carry the larger weight in activity and employment. The survey's own mapping to annualised GDP growth running well above the prior quarter is the kind of nowcast corroboration that historically keeps front-end pricing sensitive to incoming labour and inflation prints rather than to the PMI itself. The cited acceleration in hiring across both sectors is the element worth tracking against the next official payrolls release, as divergence between survey employment indices and the hard data has been a recurring fault line. As a confirming rather than surprising release, the established pattern is limited follow-through.