Other data on Monday showed manufacturing activity in New York state increased for the first time in five months. Housing and manufacturing have been hammered by the Federal Reserve's fastest interest rate hiking campaign since the 1980s.
Mortgage rates have been dropping on views that the Fed's current monetary policy tightening cycle could be drawing to a close. Residential investment has contracted for seven straight quarters, the longest such streak since the collapse of the housing bubble triggered by the 2007-2009 Great Recession.
Economists had forecast the index would be at -18.0. A reading above zero signals the New York state manufacturing sector is growing.The rebound is an encouraging sign for national manufacturing activity, which has also been undermined by the rotation of spending back to services from goods.that manufacturing output rose at a 0.3% annualized rate in the first quarter after declining at a 3.1% pace in the October-December period.