The Empire State Manufacturing Survey declined but remains in expansion. It was below expectations.

Analyst Opinion of Empire State Manufacturing Survey

I am not a fan of surveys – and this survey jumps around erratically – but has been relatively steady for the last year. Key internals in the report marginally improved so I would consider this a better report than last month.

  • Expectations from Bloomberg / Econoday were for a reading between 13.0 to 18.0 (consensus 17.5) versus the 13.1 reported. Any value above zero shows expansion for the New York area manufacturers.
  • New orders subindex of the Empire State Manufacturing improved and remains in expansion, whilst the unfilled orders sub-index improved and remains in expansion..
  • This noisy index has moved from +18.2 (February 2017), +16.4 (March), +5.2 (April), -1.0 (May), 19.8 (June), 9.8 (July), 25.2 (August), 24.4 (September), 30.2 (October), 19.4 (November), 18.0 (December), 17.7 (January 2018) – and now 13.1.
  • As this index is very noisy, it is hard to understand what these massive moves up or down mean – however this regional manufacturing survey is normally one of the more pessimistic.

    Econintersect reminds you that this is a survey (a quantification of opinion). Please see caveats at the end of this post. However, sometimes it is better not to look to deeply into the details of a noisy survey as just the overview is all you need to know.

    From the report:

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