Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Local business conditions: 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. Based on firms' responses to the Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity carried out by the Richmond FED, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for local business conditions (share of CEOs seeing a recent improvement minus share reporting a worsening) was -6.0 in September 2026, compared to 1.0 in August.
Sample. In the monthly time series presented in the plot, there are 190 data points in total. The time span covered by the series extends from December 2010 to September 2026.
History. Have a look at a few summary statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index was equal on average to -0.0; it reached its maximum of 32.0 in April 2017; it hit a minimum of -72.0 in April 2020.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 10.0000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 1.00000 |
| 2026-09-30 | -6.00000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did local business conditions improve or worsen 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.