There have been times when I've missed my old manufacturing days, but decelerating as the sector is, this is not one of them.  In this atmosphere price increases are non-existent and in some cases price decreases can even be demanded by customers (cue the image of my customer, the materials manager of the Medical/Life Sciences Instrumentation division of Parker Hannifin, actually showing up in my office with a chart of the bombed out copper price). Today he's probably got a chart of copper and oil at the ready for suppliers to err, consider.  Anyway, I digress. Here are the Philly and Empire data.

Philly:  Manufacturing business Outlook Survey (October)

NY Fed:  Empire State Manufacturing Survey

Here are a few of the more troubling items from the Empire report..