The Empire State Manufacturing Survey: January 2013

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey consists of a series of diffusion indices distilled from a monthly survey of New York regional manufacturing executives and seeks to identify trends across 22 different current and future manufacturing related activities.

Today’s report showed a slight decline for current assessments of manufacturing activity and an improvement to future assessments with the current activity index falling to a notably weak level of -7.78 while future activity improved to 22.41.

Current prices paid rose to 22.58 while current new orders weakened to -7.18 as assessments of future new orders improved to 25.11.

The Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey: September 2012

The September release of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Business Outlook Survey (BOS) indicated an improvement of the regions manufacturing activity with the current activity index rising to a contraction level of -1.9 while assessments the future activity index increased notably to a level of 41.2.

The following chart shows the current and future activity indexes both with their corresponding 3-month moving averages. The red line marks the threshold between contraction and expansion for these diffusion indexes.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey: April 2012

Today, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas released their latest read on manufacturing in their region indicating that manufacturing activity worsened with the current general business activity index declining to a contraction level of -3.4 while assessments of future general business activity index declined to 15.17.

The Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey: April 2012

Today's release of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Business Outlook Survey (BOS) for April indicated a slowing of the regions manufacturing activity with the current activity index declining to a level of 8.5 while assessments the future activity index increased slightly to a level of 33.8.

The following chart shows the current and future activity indexes both with their corresponding 3-month moving averages. The red line marks the threshold between contraction and expansion for these diffusion indexes.

Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey: March 2012

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, like other district FRBs (New York, Philadelphia, Richmond and Dallas), tracks its region’s manufacturing activity by surveying a number of important indicators such as general activity, production, shipments, orders, employment and prices for raw materials and finished products.

The latest results are indicating that the manufacturing activity declined to a weak growth level of 9 in March with more component measure declining than increasing while prices paid for raw materials declined somewhat at 33.

It's important to note that although this data-set has a history that only runs as far back as mid-2001, the composite index never fell below 10 during the "recovery" that followed the tech-wreck of the early aughts.

Today, we see the composite index not only remaining depressed but occasionally turning notably negative, clearly indicating the internal weakness of our current economic expansion and possibly presenting a strong signal of recession to come.

The following chart plots the seasonally adjusted Composite index since 2001 with the solid red line indicating the threshold between expansion and contraction.