Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Capital expenditures: Current (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally adjusted) - United States - Richmond FED - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity (Richmond FED)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. According to survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for capital expenditures (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) was -16.0 in September 2025, versus -23.0 in August.
Sample. There are 136 observations in the monthly time series shown in the graph above. The time range covered by the series is from February 2010 to September 2025.
History. Here are some simple statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index registered a minimum of -31.0 in May 2020; it achieved a maximum of 29.0 in September 2014; it was equal on average to 8.9.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-07-31 | -16.0 |
| 2025-08-31 | -23.0 |
| 2025-09-30 | -16.0 |
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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 |
| Deflation method | Not applicable |
| Seasonally adjusted | Yes |
| Rescaling | None |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Unit | Percentage points |
| Source | Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond |
| Source type | Central bank |
| Data licence | Not copyrightable under U.S. law |
| Measure type | Diffusion index (share of respondents reporting an increase minus share reporting a decrease) |
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