The national employer association Ai Group is pleased to announce the launch on Wednesday 8 February 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®. (Note Wednesday release – not Tuesday as earlier advised).

After the first release this Wednesday, the Ai Group Australian Industry Index® will be regularly published on the first working Wednesday of each month (or the following working day if the Wednesday is a national holiday).

On the day of release media and subscribers to Ai Group’s economic data will receive an embargoed version of the report at 07:30am for publication at 09:00am.

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, we are integrating and extending our 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*. 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.

NOTE – Recognising the heritage and importance of the Australian PMI® and Australian 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.

In Ai Group's 150th year, we are proud to launch this innovative new indicator of Australia’s industry performance. It provides business leaders, policymakers and markets an invaluable resource to track the performance of Australian industry and its critical contribution to the national economy.

* Production, Employment, New Orders, Input Purchases, Exports, Capacity Utilisation, Input Prices, Selling Prices, Wages

Media enquiries

Tony Melville – 0419 190 347