A monthly survey of firms or consumers that turns before the hard data
Surveys of businesses and households published within days of the month's end; below their neutral line, more respondents see contraction than growth.
Official output and employment figures arrive one to three months after the fact and are revised. Surveys arrive within days and ask a simple question: is activity better, the same or worse than last month? The answers are combined into a diffusion index, the share reporting improvement minus the share reporting deterioration, so the index says how widespread a change is rather than how large. Purchasing managers' indexes centre on 50, the regional Fed surveys on zero, the European Commission's sentiment indicator on its long-run mean of 100.
The rule on worldstat.us: a reading below the neutral line, held for two months where the series is noisy, counts as a contraction signal. Single months below neutral are common outside recessions; two in a row are not. Each region uses the survey its own institutions publish: the New York and Philadelphia Fed manufacturing surveys in the United States, the Commission's Economic Sentiment Indicator in the euro area, the National Bureau of Statistics' manufacturing PMI in China, the Cabinet Office's Economy Watchers survey in Japan, and the Bank of England's Decision Maker Panel in the United Kingdom. India's PMI is compiled by a private firm and is not free to redistribute.
Surveys lead activity by a few months at best and over-react to headlines, which is why they sit in the Cycle layer beside harder series rather than driving the score alone.
Bank of England · Decision Maker Panel · ESI · Economy Watchers Survey · Federal Reserve · NBS · PMI · diffusion index · recession · revision