The New York Fed (Empire State), Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed, Dallas Fed, and Kansas City Fed each publish monthly surveys of manufacturing conditions in their districts. These surveys arrive at different times during the month, and collectively they cover enough of the country to give you a preview of the ISM Manufacturing PMI before it is officially released.
Each survey has its own methodology, scale, and quirks. The Empire State and Philly Fed surveys use a similar diffusion index format centered on zero (not 50 like ISM). The Dallas Fed adjusts for company size. The Richmond Fed combines manufacturing and services into a composite. Despite these differences, combining them with appropriate weights has historically provided a useful advance estimate of the national ISM number.
The Empire State survey is typically the first major release each month, arriving around the 15th. This makes it the earliest look at manufacturing conditions for the current month. Markets pay attention to it for this reason, even though New York State is not a major manufacturing hub.
The Philly Fed survey covers a larger manufacturing base and has had a slightly better correlation with the national ISM than the Empire State survey. Its six-month outlook component provides forward-looking information that the headline number does not capture. When the outlook diverges significantly from current conditions, it tends to predict the direction of future headline readings.
The Dallas Fed survey is heavily influenced by the energy sector given the district's economic composition. During periods of volatile oil prices, the Dallas survey can diverge from other regional surveys. This is actually useful information: if the Dallas Fed is weakening while other districts hold steady, it suggests the weakness is energy-specific rather than broad-based.
For traders, the practical workflow is to track each regional survey as it releases and update a weighted composite. A simple average works reasonably well. When three or more of the five surveys are pointing in the same direction, the ISM reading tends to confirm.
The services surveys from regional Feds have become more important as the US economy has shifted toward services. The New York Fed and Dallas Fed both publish services surveys that, combined, give you an early read on the ISM Services PMI.
One underused feature of the regional surveys is their special questions. Each month, some surveys include supplementary questions on topical issues like supply chain conditions, pricing power, hiring plans, or capital expenditure intentions. These special questions provide qualitative context that pure numerical indices cannot capture and occasionally flag emerging issues before they show up in other data.