Average Fed Srv Survey: Hours worked / average workweek: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally adjusted) - United States - FSR - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Average Fed Srv Survey (FetchSeries Research)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. Based on an average of regional Federal Reserve services surveys, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for hours worked / average workweek stood at 2.3 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, compared to 0.9 in August.
Sample. The monthly time series shown in the chart has 153 observations. The span of time covered by the series is from January 2014 to September 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of a few summary statistics computed on the full sample: the diffusion index recorded a bottom of -14.6 in March 2020; it hit a maximum of 22.5 in April 2021; it averaged 8.6.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 7.10000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 0.850000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 2.30000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will hours worked or 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 | Yes |
| 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 3 regional Federal Reserve services surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
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