- by New Deal democrat
- Empire State up +6.1 to -8.8
- Philly down -42.3 to -34.2
- Richmond down -9 to -13
- Kansas City up +1 to -11
- *Dallas down -19.9 to -20.0
- Month-over-month rolling average: down -18 from +1 to -17
Some other observers have also been keeping track of these surveys. Here’s a graph of the above new orders indexes including all of them except for this morning’s update from Dallas:
The average now is as bad as it was at its worst at the end of 2022.
I’ve also been keeping track of the same regional Feds’ non-manufacturing service sector surveys. Dallas will not report until tomorrow. Here are the other four:
- Empire State down -0.5 to -19.8
- Philly up +1.3 to +6.9
- Richmond down -16 to -30
- Kansas City up +3 to +3
The average for service so far this month is -7. Here is a similar graph of those surveys:
Again, the average is about where it was at its worst in 2022. But then global supply chain pressures were easing post-COVID; now they are almost certainly rapidly worsening.
In general the regional average for the Fed surveys is more volatile than the corresponding ISM index, but usually correctly forecasts its month-over-month direction. Last month I closed my report on the average of the two ISM surveys with the comment that
“For March alone, the economically weighted headline average was 50.4, but the new orders weighted average fell into contraction at 49.1. The three month economically weighted average for the manufacturing and non-manufacturing indexes combined is 51.8 for the headline, and 50.9 for new orders.