Average Fed Mfg Survey: Capacity utilization: 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 capacity utilization was 23.1 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, compared to 20.9 in August 2026.
Sample. The monthly series plotted above has 267 data points in total. The series covers the time period stretching from June 2004 to September 2026.
History. Have a look at a few simple statistics we computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index had a mean of 27.1; it hit a minimum of -7.4 in April 2020; it reached its highest level of 52.1 in February 2017.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 18.9500 |
| 2026-08-31 | 20.9000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 23.0500 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will capacity utilization 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 2 regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
Series in the same data set
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