Pressure on the global supply chain is at the lowest it has been since November 2020, according to the transportation cost and manufacturing data tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
September is the fifth consecutive month of supply pressures easing closer to historical levels.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain stressors have peaked multiple times, setting records for highest supply chain strains since the Federal Reserve started the index in 1997.
Despite the index creeping closer to baseline levels, it may be too early to know which — and when — industries will recover, Bloomberg reported Oct. 10.
"A big distinction needs to be made between indexes capturing dynamics associated with international transportation — both containerized waterborne freight and air — versus indexes capturing raw material shortage issues," Jason Miller, PhD, an associate professor of logistics at Michigan State University in East Lansing, told Bloomberg. "Across all manufacturers, insufficient supply of labor and raw materials have been effectively unchanged since the third quarter of 2021 in terms of severity."