Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey: May 2013

The March release of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Business Outlook Survey (BOS) indicated a slight worsening of the regions manufacturing activity with the current activity index falling to a weak level of -5.2 while assessments the future activity improved to a level of 32.3.

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.