Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Wages: 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 survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for wages (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 47.0 in September 2025, versus 42.0 in August.
Sample. There are 259 observations in the monthly time series shown in the graph above. The time span covered by the series goes from January 1997 to September 2025.
History. Here's a peek at some descriptive statistics we computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index peaked at 81.0 in February 2021; it recorded a bottom of -2.0 in April 2020; it averaged 35.5.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-07-31 | 36.0 |
| 2025-08-31 | 42.0 |
| 2025-09-30 | 47.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will wages 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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