There are several points from the above data:
1.) There are now two months of solid increased (the lower gray lines). While this is not strong enough to call a trend, it does indicate that activity has increased over the last two months. This has probably led to an increase in the future expectations.
2.) Notice the big bump in new orders, shipping and overall activity. Those are welcome changes. However, also notice that employment and hours worked are still hovering at low levels. That means we haven't seen enough strong and continuous activity to see movement, indicating there is still a fair amount of caution about longer term prospects right now. That makes a great deal of sense considering we've only seen two months of solid improvements.
Because of their geographic proximity, here is a link to the latest NY Fed report. Remember it fell a bit this month, but has been in an uptrend for a few months before that indicating the NY area may be just a bit ahead of Philly.
