Average Fed Mfg Survey: Capital expenditures: Current (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 capital expenditures was 2.5 (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) in September 2026, versus 1.6 in August 2026.
Sample. The monthly time series shown in the figure has 190 observations. The series covers the span of time stretching from February 2010 to September 2026.
History. Here are a few descriptive statistics computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index was equal on average to 7.9; it reached a maximum of 27.9 in April 2018; it recorded a bottom of -37.5 in April 2020.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 4.75000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 1.60000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 2.55000 |
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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 |
| 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
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