Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Capital expenditures: Current (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally adjusted) - 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 adjusted diffusion index for capital expenditures (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 1.0 in May 2026, compared to -11.0 in April 2026.
Sample. There are 187 data points in the monthly time series displayed in the graph above. The period covered by the series stretches from February 2010 to May 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of some descriptive statistics we computed on the full sample: the diffusion index hit a peak of 29.0 in September 2014; it reached a minimum of -31.0 in May 2020; it averaged 8.6.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-31 | -6.0 |
| 2026-04-30 | -11.0 |
| 2026-05-31 | 1.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did capital expenditures increase or decrease in the past month? |
| Country | United States |
| Economic concept | Business survey response |
| Data type | Coincident indicator of the business cycle |
| Deflation method | Not applicable |
| Seasonally adjusted | Yes |
| 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) |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.