Average Fed Mfg Survey: Number of employees: 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 number of employees was 19.3 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, versus 22.2 in August 2026.
Sample. There are 268 records in the monthly time series displayed in the chart above. The time span covered by the series is from June 2004 to September 2026.
History. Here are a few simple statistics computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index had a mean value of 18.0; it reached its lowest level of -19.7 in February 2009; it hit a maximum of 48.2 in April 2021.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 15.1000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 22.2400 |
| 2026-09-30 | 19.3400 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will the number of employees 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 5 regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
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