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 recent survey data about manufacturing firms 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 -5.0 in November 2025, versus -10.0 in October.
Sample. The monthly series displayed in the figure has 181 observations overall. The time period covered by the series stretches from February 2010 to November 2025.
History. Check out a few descriptive statistics computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index reached a trough of -31.0 in May 2020; it recorded a maximum of 29.0 in September 2014; it was equal on average to 9.1.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-09-30 | -16.0 |
| 2025-10-31 | -10.0 |
| 2025-11-30 | -5.0 |
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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.