Average Fed Mfg Survey: Number of employees: 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 number of employees was 6.3 (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) in September 2026, compared to 7.1 in the previous month.
Sample. In the monthly series shown in the chart, there are 268 observations. The time range covered by the series goes from June 2004 to September 2026.
History. Here's a peek at a few summary statistics computed on the full sample: the diffusion index reached its lowest level of -41.3 in March 2009; it achieved a maximum of 28.2 in April 2021; it had a mean value of 5.1.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 7.00000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 7.08000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 6.32000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did the number of employees 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 5 regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
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