Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey: April 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 expansionary level of 1.3 while assessments the future activity plunged to a level of 19.5.

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.