Journal Article

Introducing the Philadelphia Fed nonmanufacturing survey

Abstract: To assess the health of the economy, it sometimes helps to look beyond the numbers and listen directly to business managers. That is why the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and a handful of other regional Reserve Banks and private firms such as the Institute for Supply Management conduct a variety of monthly surveys of business activity. Such qualitative surveys offer the advantage of providing timelier insight into economic activity prior to the official monthly employment and quarterly gross domestic product data releases as well as insight into regional and local trends. And now economy-watchers have a new survey in their toolkits: To complement our Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey ? the nation?s oldest regional manufacturing survey ? the Philadelphia Fed has introduced a survey of nonmanufacturing firms in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware called the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Nonmanufacturing Business Outlook Survey

Keywords: Economy; Manufacturing; Business Outlook Survey; BOS; GDP; Non-manufacturing; Employment;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Part of Series: Business Review

Publication Date: 2014

Issue: Q3

Pages: 15-22