Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Inventories of raw materials: Current (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally unadjusted) - 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 based in the Fifth District, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for inventories of raw materials (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 14.0 in September 2025, versus 24.0 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 259 records in the monthly time series shown in the figure above. The time span covered by the series goes from January 1997 to September 2025.
History. Here's a glimpse of a few summary statistics calculated on the whole sample: the diffusion index reached its lowest level of -25.0 in July 2021; it peaked at 35.0 in February 2008; it had a mean value of 15.0.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-07-31 | 16.0 |
| 2025-08-31 | 24.0 |
| 2025-09-30 | 14.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did raw materials inventories 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 | No |
| 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) |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.