Average Fed Mfg Survey: Capacity utilization: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally unadjusted) - United States - FSR - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Average Fed Mfg Survey (FetchSeries Research)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. Based on an average of regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for capacity utilization was 23.1 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, compared to 20.9 in August 2026.
Sample. There are 267 records in the monthly time series shown in the plot above. The span of time covered by the series stretches from June 2004 to September 2026.
History. Here's a peek at some summary statistics computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index peaked at 52.1 in February 2017; it recorded a minimum of -7.4 in April 2020; it had a mean value of 27.1.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 18.9500 |
| 2026-08-31 | 20.9000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 23.0500 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will capacity utilization increase or decrease over the next six months? |
| Country | United States |
| Economic concept | Business survey response |
| Data type | Leading indicator of the business cycle |
| Seasonally adjusted | No |
| Deflation method | Not applicable |
| Rescaling | None |
| Measure type | Diffusion index (share of respondents reporting an increase minus share reporting a decrease) |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Unit | Percentage points |
| Source | FetchSeries Research calculations on Federal Reserve data |
| Source type | Data research lab |
| Data licence | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) + FetchSeries disclaimers |
| Other information | Arithmetic average across 2 regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.