Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Capacity utilization: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally unadjusted) - United States - Richmond FED - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity (Richmond FED)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. According to survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for capacity utilization (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share reporting a decrease) was 9.0 in November 2025, compared to -3.0 in October.
Sample. In this monthly series, there are 345 observations. The series covers the period extending from January 1997 to November 2025.
History. Here's a glimpse of a few descriptive statistics we computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index was equal on average to 22.7; it registered a minimum of -12.0 in October 2022; it attained a maximum of 50.0 in February 2017.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-09-30 | -10.0 |
| 2025-10-31 | -3.0 |
| 2025-11-30 | 9.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will capacity utilization 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 | No |
| Rescaling | None |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Unit | Percentage points |
| Source | Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond |
| Source type | Central bank |
| Data licence | Not copyrightable under U.S. law |
| Measure type | Diffusion index (share of respondents reporting an increase minus share reporting a decrease) |
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