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. Based on a sample of manufacturing firms surveyd by the FED, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for wages (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share reporting a decrease) was 47.0 in September 2025, compared to 42.0 in August 2025.
Sample. In the monthly time series displayed in the graph, there are 259 data points in total. The span of time covered by the series is from January 1997 to September 2025.
History. Here's a glimpse of some summary statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index reached a minimum of -2.0 in April 2020; it attained a maximum of 81.0 in February 2021; it had a mean of 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) |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.