Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Capital expenditures: Current (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. Based on a sample of manufacturing firms surveyed by the Fed, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for capital expenditures (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at -14.0 in October 2026, compared to -6.0 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 191 observations in the monthly series shown in the figure above. The series covers the time period extending from December 2010 to October 2026.
History. Here’s a quick look at a few simple statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index reached a maximum of 31.0 in April 2018; it recorded a bottom of -29.0 in May 2020; it had an average value of 8.1.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-08-31 | -7.00000 |
| 2026-09-30 | -6.00000 |
| 2026-10-31 | -14.0000 |
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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 | 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) |
Series in the same data set
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