Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey: Inventories: Current (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally unadjusted) - United States - Philly FED - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey (Philly FED)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. According to recent survey data about manufacturing firms in the Third Federal Reserve District, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for inventories (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at -8.0 in September 2026, versus -8.3 in August 2026.
Sample. In this monthly time series, there are 701 records overall. The time span covered by the series goes from May 1968 to September 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of a few summary statistics we computed on the full sample: the diffusion index had a mean of -5.1; it attained a maximum of 29.0 in March 1973; it hit a trough of -48.0 in March 1975.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 0 |
| 2026-08-31 | -8.30000 |
| 2026-09-30 | -8.00000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did inventories 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 Philadelphia |
| 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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