This morning’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey showed an uptick in manufacturing after some notably weak readings across the board in recent months. The June reading came in at 7.84. The May reading of -1.43 was the lowest since January of this year. But the improvement in this month’s report has to be viewed with a grain of salt. The internals were very weak with new orders at -6.69 and backlogs at -14.52.
This is the first of many of the regional reports for the month of June. The other reports should give us a better understanding of where the manufacturing sector is headed. Last month’s real-time composite showed slight improvement from 2.4 to 4.2 and is still consistent with a marginally expanding US economy. We’re really teetering on the expansion/contraction line though…