The national activity index remained unchanged at minus 0.19 in March, pointing to steady but below average economic growth. The 3-month moving average increased to 0.01 from minus 0.09.

Employment, unemployment and hours was the only category to make a positive contribution in March (0.01), an improvement from February, when the contribution was minus 0.09. At minus 0.02, sales, orders and inventories' contribution was not as negative as the previous month (minus 0.09). The two other components deteriorated: the contribution from production and income turned negative (minus 0.08) from being a positive 0.04 in February, while the negative contribution from personal consumption and housing was more negative than the previous month (minus 0.10 after minus 0.05).

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) is a monthly index that tracks overall economic activity and inflationary pressures. The CFNAI is a weighted average of 85 existing monthly indicators of national economic activity. It is constructed to have an average value of zero and a standard deviation of one. Since economic activity tends toward trend growth over time, a positive index reading corresponds to growth above trend and a negative index reading corresponds to growth below trend.

This index is unique among regional Federal Reserve Bank indexes in that it is national in scope. Investors are eager to have insight into economic growth and inflation. This index combines 85 diverse and already released indicators from four broad categories -- production and income; employment, unemployment, and hours; personal consumption and housing; and sales, orders, and inventories -- into an overall index to measure economic performance. The index provides another measure with which investors can measure overall growth.