Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Local business conditions: Future (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 recent survey data about manufacturing firms in the Fifth District, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for local business conditions (share of CEOs seeing a future improvement minus share forecasting a worsening) stood at -4.0 in September 2025, versus -11.0 in August.
Sample. This monthly series has 136 data points. The time period covered by the series is from February 2010 to September 2025.
History. Take a look at a few summary statistics we calculated on the full sample: the diffusion index reached a maximum of 53.0 in April 2021; it reached a trough of -31.0 in June 2022; it had a mean of 20.4.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-07-31 | -6.0 |
| 2025-08-31 | -11.0 |
| 2025-09-30 | -4.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will local business conditions improve or worsen increase or decrease over the next six months? |
| Country | United States |
| Economic concept | Business survey response |
| Data type | Leading 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) |
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