by Calculated Risk on 7/23/2020 01:05:00 PM

From the Kansas City Fed: Tenth District Manufacturing Activity Continued to Grow Slightly

Tenth District manufacturing activity continued to grow slightly after decreasing sharply in the spring, but still remained well below year-ago levels. Expectations for future activity continued to improve slightly. District firms continued to expect prices for both finished goods and raw materials to expand in the next six months.

The month-over-month composite index was 3 in July, up slightly from 1 in June and up considerably from -19 in May. ...The composite index is an average of the production, new orders, employment, supplier delivery time, and raw materials inventory indexes. The improvement in activity was still driven by non-durable goods plants. However, activity in most durable goods factories also improved except for continued decreases in fabricated metals and computer and electronics plants. Most month-over-month indexes were positive. Production, shipments, new orders, and supplier delivery time indexes remained positive, and indexes for order backlog and employment recovered to positive levels. Only new orders for exports and inventories indexes remained negative. Most year-over-year factory indexes increased but remained negative in July. The future composite index continued to rise in July, increasing slightly from 9 to 14.
emphasis added

This suggests activity has bottomed, but this is just a slight increase off the bottom.