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March 2018 Empire State Manufacturing Index Improves

By Kurt Osterberg · On March 15, 2018

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey improved and remains in expansion. It was well above 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 10.2 to 16.0 (consensus 14.6) versus the 22.5 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 +16.4 (March 2017), +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), 13.1 (February) – and now 22.5.

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 too deeply into the details of a noisy survey as just the overview is all you need to know.

From the report: