Average Fed Mfg Survey: Capital expenditures: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally adjusted) - 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 adjusted diffusion index for capital expenditures stood at 17.0 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, compared to 22.3 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 268 data points in the monthly time series displayed in the plot above. The series covers the period going from June 2004 to September 2026.
History. Here’s a quick look at some summary statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index recorded a maximum of 34.8 in February 2018; it hit a trough of -23.3 in February 2009; it had an average value of 17.1.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 15.0000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 22.3200 |
| 2026-09-30 | 17.0200 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will capital expenditures 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 | Yes |
| 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 5 regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
Series in the same data set
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