Average Fed Srv Survey: Number of employees: Current (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 the number of employees was 3.8 (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) in September 2026, versus 1.7 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 153 records in the monthly time series displayed in the chart above. The series covers the time range extending from January 2014 to September 2026.
History. Here are a few descriptive statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index recorded a minimum of -39.8 in April 2020; it recorded its maximum of 17.9 in February 2018; it averaged 7.4.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 5.75000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 1.72500 |
| 2026-09-30 | 3.77500 |
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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 | 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 4 regional Federal Reserve services surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
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