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 expansion slowed slightly falling to 20 from a level of 23 a month earlier while the employee index increased to 21 and the prices paid for raw materials declined to 73 from March’s decade high of 81.
The following chart plots the seasonally adjusted Composite index since 2001 with the solid red line indicating the threshold between expansion and contraction.
