Average Fed Mfg Survey: Capital expenditures: Current (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 capital expenditures was 2.5 (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) in September 2026, compared to 1.6 in the previous month.
Sample. The monthly time series displayed in the chart has 190 data points. The period covered by the series is from February 2010 to September 2026.
History. Take a look at a few statistics we computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index hit a peak of 27.9 in April 2018; it hit a minimum of -37.5 in April 2020; it averaged 7.9.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 4.75000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 1.60000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 2.55000 |
Heads-up. To simplify exploration, we group series into worksheets and datasets. If you look below, you will discover how we structured further information related to the statistics published here.
Not for investment purposes. Data hosted on this web site are not suitable for investment purposes or as a basis for making financial decisions. Users should ask for expert advice and do their own independent due diligence before pledging money to any investment.
Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did capital expenditures increase or decrease in the past month? |
| Country | United States |
| Economic concept | Business survey response |
| Data type | Coincident 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
Discover the other time series included in this data set.