Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Inventories of finished goods: 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. According to survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for inventories of finished goods (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 7.0 in February 2026, compared to 5.0 in January.
Sample. There are 348 records overall in the monthly time series shown in the graph above. The span of time covered by the series extends from January 1997 to February 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of some summary statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index reached a trough of -22.0 in November 2021; it peaked at 48.0 in September 2000; it had an average value of 17.5.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-12-31 | 7.0 |
| 2026-01-31 | 5.0 |
| 2026-02-28 | 7.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did finished goods inventories 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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