Fifth District Survey of Non-Manufacturing Activity: Business services expenditures: 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 Non-Manufacturing Activity (Richmond FED)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. According to recent survey data about nonmanufacturing firms in the Fifth District, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for business services expenditures (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) was -9.0 in September 2026, versus -1.0 in August.
Sample. There are 190 observations in the monthly series shown in the chart above. The time range covered by the series is from December 2010 to September 2026.
History. Take a look at a few simple statistics we calculated on the full sample: the diffusion index had a mean value of 3.9; it reached a maximum of 23.0 in April 2017; it reached its minimum of -44.0 in April 2020.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | -3.00000 |
| 2026-08-31 | -1.00000 |
| 2026-09-30 | -9.00000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did business services expenditures 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) |
| Other information | Not available |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.