Average Fed Mfg Survey: Average employee workweek: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally unadjusted) - United States - FSR - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Average Fed Mfg Survey (FetchSeries Research)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. Based on an average of regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for average employee workweek was 11.6 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, versus 8.0 in August.
Sample. There are 268 observations in the monthly series shown in the graph above. The span of time covered by the series extends from June 2004 to September 2026.
History. Take a look at some summary statistics we computed on the full sample: the diffusion index averaged 7.6; it achieved a maximum of 23.7 in February 2010; it reached its lowest level of -11.4 in October 2008.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 5.75000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 7.97500 |
| 2026-09-30 | 11.5750 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will the average employee workweek increase or decrease over the next six months? |
| Country | United States |
| Economic concept | Business survey response |
| Data type | Leading indicator of the business cycle |
| Seasonally adjusted | No |
| Deflation method | Not applicable |
| Rescaling | None |
| Measure type | Diffusion index (share of respondents reporting an increase minus share reporting a decrease) |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Unit | Percentage points |
| Source | FetchSeries Research calculations on Federal Reserve data |
| Source type | Data research lab |
| Data licence | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) + FetchSeries disclaimers |
| Other information | Arithmetic average across 5 regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
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