Empire State Manufacturing Survey: General business activity: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally adjusted) - United States - NY FED - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Empire State Manufacturing Survey (NY FED)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. Based on manufacturing firms' responses to the Empire State Survey carried out by the New York FED, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for general business activity (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) stood at 35.7 in December 2025, versus 19.1 in November.
Sample. There are 294 records overall in the monthly series shown in the plot above. The series covers the span of time stretching from July 2001 to December 2025.
History. Here's a glimpse of some descriptive statistics we computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index recorded a bottom of -11.9 in September 2001; it peaked at 69.5 in April 2002; it had an average value of 34.7.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-10-31 | 30.3 |
| 2025-11-30 | 19.1 |
| 2025-12-31 | 35.7 |
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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 |
| Deflation method | Not applicable |
| Seasonally adjusted | Yes |
| Rescaling | None |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Unit | Percentage points |
| Source | Federal Reserve Bank of New York |
| Source type | Central bank |
| Data licence | Free use subject to conditions |
| Measure type | Diffusion index (share of respondents reporting an increase minus share reporting a decrease) |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.