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 based in the Fifth District, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for capital expenditures (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) was -16.0 in January 2026, compared to -1.0 in December 2025.
Sample. There are 183 data points in the monthly series presented in the graph above. The series covers the span of time going from February 2010 to January 2026.
History. Have a look at a few summary statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index had a mean value of 8.9; it hit a peak of 29.0 in September 2014; it registered a minimum of -31.0 in May 2020.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-11-30 | -5.0 |
| 2025-12-31 | -1.0 |
| 2026-01-31 | -16.0 |
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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.