Average Fed Srv Survey: General business activity: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally unadjusted) - United States - FSR - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Average Fed Srv Survey (FetchSeries Research)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. Based on an average of regional Federal Reserve services surveys, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for general business activity was 0.9 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, compared to 2.7 in August.
Sample. There are 153 records in the monthly series displayed in the graph above. The series covers the period extending from January 2014 to September 2026.
History. Have a look at some summary statistics we computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index was equal on average to 20.7; it reached its minimum of -33.7 in April 2020; it recorded its maximum of 63.2 in May 2021.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 16.3000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 2.70000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 0.950000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will general business activity 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 4 regional Federal Reserve services surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
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