Are you saying PMI is a survey of 400 manufacturing executives about the status of manufacturing, and you don't think it carries meaningful signal about the status of manufacturing? I wonder what you think _would_ carry meaningful signal, if you're not satisfied by asking the people that are doing said manufacturing?

Hard numbers. Like output, or investment made. Like number of cars, tons of steel, etc. Things that actually reflect reality

> Things that actually reflect reality

YMMV - Soviet Russia comes to mind. Still better than ‘feels’.

Executives aren't exactly the ones doing all the manufacturing. If you want to look at employment in manufacturing, the most you can say is that's it's stabilized after the first year of this administration: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUKx

ironic given top comment on this thread is pure vibes. interesting you chose to repond with this "vibes" comment to this instead.

While the top comment is pretty vibey, it's not presenting itself as firm statistics.