June's Regional Business Surveys Were Recessionary

It's hard to come up with anything positive to say about June's batch of regional business surveys conducted by five of the 12 district Federal Reserve Banks. That's because they were mostly in negative territory (chart below). They certainly add to the credibility of the recession-is-here scenario.

However, the regional surveys tend to focus on manufacturing rather than services. Indeed, the averages of the five composite indexes, and their new orders and employment components, tend to closely track the comparable national manufacturing purchasing managers indexes (M-PMI).