In January of each year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia calculates new seasonal adjustment factors for the upcoming year for the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey using data through December of the previous calendar year and publishes historical data revisions that incorporate these new seasonal factors.

However, due to atypical volatility at the onset of the pandemic as well as ongoing uncertainty about the pandemic’s impacts on seasonal factors, we have not incorporated data from 2020 or 2021 and are re-using factors for 2020 for both 2021 and 2022. Therefore, we have not revised the historical data.

Seasonal factors for 2022 are based on the U.S. Census Bureau's Census X-12 program for 50 years of data through December 2019, and seasonal factors for the 12 months of 2022 as well as the 12 months of 2021 repeat the factors for the 12 months of 2020, which were projected in January 2020 using the X-12-ARIMA method.

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