The June reading of the Empire State Manufacturing Index, a regional survey of manufacturing industry business owners by the New York Fed, was quite bad.
Details: The headline reading was -8.6, down from 17.8 the month before, the largest monthly decline ever recorded.
The survey was also the lowest reading since October 2016.
It was expected to be 11.0, and the nearly 19-point miss is the biggest since November 2010.
The details were also bad, with new orders falling 20 points, prices received down 6 points, shipments down 7 points and number of employees falling 8 points.
Yes, but: "This looks terrible, but it won't last," says Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a note to clients. "The survey is conducted during the first 10 days of the month so it likely reflects the peak of Mexico tariff fear. ... During that period, businesses appear to have panicked."
