April 2021 Philly Fed Manufacturing Survey Index Improvement Continues Analyst Opinion of the Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey Overall, this report was better than last month but key elements improvement was mixed This is a very noisy index which readers should be reminded is sentiment-based. The Philly Fed historically is one of the more negative of all the Fed manufacturing surveys but has been more positive than the others recently. The index moved from 44.5 to 50.2. Positive numbers indicate market expansion, negative numbers indicate contraction. The market expected (from Econoday) 30.0 to 47.6 (consensus +43.0). Manufacturing conditions in the region continued to improve this month, according to firms responding to the April