Average Fed Srv Survey: Hours worked / average workweek: 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 hours worked / average workweek was 0.4 (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) in September 2026, compared to -2.5 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 153 data points in the monthly time series presented in the figure above. The series covers the span of time extending from January 2014 to September 2026.
History. Here's a peek at a few simple statistics we computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index was equal on average to 8.6; it reached its highest level of 25.6 in April 2021; it hit a trough of -10.7 in April 2020.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 3.95000 |
| 2026-08-31 | -2.45000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 0.400000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will hours worked or the average employee workweek 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 3 regional Federal Reserve services surveys |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LM01 |
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