Philly Fed Employment

Philly Fed Employment is the Number of Employees reading from the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey (MBOS). The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has run a monthly poll since May 1968. It is the longest running manufacturing survey from a regional Reserve Bank. It covers manufacturers in Delaware, southern New Jersey and eastern and central Pennsylvania.

The Bank is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks in the Federal Reserve System. Owners, chief executives and plant managers answer, and the panel stays nearly fixed month to month. Firms that reply vary slightly since taking part is voluntary.

The gauge tracks people employed by each firm, so headcount direction only, not hours, hiring totals or US payrolls. In Arabic coverage it appears as a Philadelphia manufacturing gauge or a US Philadelphia manufacturing index. Markets watch it since it lands ahead of official releases and the Third District tracks US factory trends.

Replies are gathered online across 8 days ending the Monday before release. Results usually appear at 8:30 AM Eastern on the third Thursday monthly, barring holidays. They appear on the Bank website only, with the text file first and supporting files after. Each release brings a text report and a PDF, plus two charts for activity and prices.

A table shows current and 6-month-ahead diffusion indexes with increase, no-change and decrease shares. It also gives special-question results and the next release date. Full records run from May 1968 in CSV, XLS and TXT files with an interactive data tool.

Seasonally adjusted data are revised each January with fresh factors through the prior December. Revised files land one week before the January release, and shifts are usually small.

Employment rests on a single question, so the gauges below give context, not inputs.

• General activity: overall business conditions from its own question, not built from other answers.
• New orders: inflow of fresh demand.
• Shipments: volume of goods sent out, turning demand into output.
• Average employee workweek: mean hours per worker, the hours leg that can diverge from headcount.
• Prices paid and prices received: input costs and selling prices for manufacturers.
• Unfilled orders, delivery times, inventories and capital spending: backlog, speed, stocks and future-only investment plans.

The September 19, 2024 release put employment at 10.7, up from minus 5.7. That came from 10.7% gains, 0.0% losses and 89.3% unchanged. That steady share was the highest since December 1978. By contrast new orders slid to minus 1.5 and shipments to minus 14.3, the weakest since March 2023.

The workweek sank from minus 2.3 to minus 13.6. Headline activity rose from minus 7.0 to 1.7, and expected employment rose from 7.4 to 19.1. The lesson is that a firm jobs print can sit beside weak orders, shipments and hours, when about 9 in 10 firms stand pat.

1. Response shares: tally the share reporting increase, no change and decrease for Number of Employees.
2. Census X-12 seasonal fix: adjust each of the three shares alone with Census Bureau X-12 factors. Factors reset each January through the prior December, leaving out 2020 and 2021.
3. Diffusion spread: subtract the adjusted loss share from the adjusted gain share. For example 30% up, 50% flat and 20% down gives 10.0.
4. Scale and read: scores run from minus 100 to 100, with 0 even. Above 0 leans expansion and below 0 leans contraction. The gap shows breadth, not job totals.