Today, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released the results of their Business Outlook Survey (BOS) for February showing a slight improvement in manufacturing activity for the Philadelphia region with the current activity index increasing to 17.6.Further, although the future activity index has trended down a bit in recent months, at a reading of 38.5 it’s still well within expansion territory.
As was noted earlier this week, the Empire State Manufacturing Index, the BOS Current Activity Index and the ISM’s PMI Composite Manufacturing Index correlate well and taken together confirm that improvement in manufacturing activity is currently underway.
In the first two charts, the bright yellow band indicates contraction (0 to -100) while any value above that band indicates expansion.
