Fifth District Survey of Non-Manufacturing Activity: Capital 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 survey data about nonmanufacturing firms collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for capital expenditures (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) was -4.0 in September 2026, versus 4.0 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 190 observations overall in the monthly time series displayed in the figure above. The series covers the time period stretching from December 2010 to September 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of a few simple statistics we calculated on the whole sample: the diffusion index recorded a bottom of -36.0 in April 2020; it recorded its highest level of 29.0 in August 2017; it had a mean of 8.3.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | -1.00000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 4.00000 |
| 2026-09-30 | -4.00000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did capital 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 |
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