New York state manufacturing activity plunges in August

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss the New York Empire State factory gauge plunging in August.

Video transcript

BRIAN CHEUNG: But shifting gears as well, a lot of other economic data crossing this morning domestically, where we saw, at least from the New York Fed, manufacturing activity seeing a sharp decline. The New York Fed reporting this morning down 42% on their Empire State manufacturing survey. You can see the line ahead of you. That's down to lowest level since the pandemic time.

And this shows just how pessimistic manufacturers, at least in the Northeastern part of the country, are feeling. And combine this also with the information that we got from the National Association of Homebuilders, the NAHB, where they said that they saw builder confidence fall for the eighth straight month. Quote, "Tighter monetary policy from the Fed and persistently elevated construction costs have brought on a housing recession."

So if you kind of combine these two threads together, Akiko, what that really kind of shows is an American economy that does, indeed, have signs of slowing down, which the Fed might want to see because hopefully that cools inflation, but of course, the natural question is, has this started the momentum into a hard landing here with economic activity possibly falling off a cliff at the same time rates are still going up?

AKIKO FUJITA: And of course, we've been watching the housing market really closely as potentially kind of the leading indicator of where things are going in the economy.