Average Fed Srv Survey: Number of employees: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally unadjusted) - 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 unadjusted diffusion index for the number of employees was 11.8 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, versus 9.1 in August.
Sample. There are 153 observations overall in the monthly series shown in the graph above. The time span covered by the series is from January 2014 to September 2026.
History. Take a look at some descriptive statistics we calculated on the full sample: the diffusion index had a mean of 21.0; it registered a minimum of -16.5 in April 2020; it achieved a maximum of 42.3 in March 2022.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 14.4500 |
| 2026-08-31 | 9.07500 |
| 2026-09-30 | 11.8250 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will the number of employees 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 4 regional Federal Reserve services surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
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