Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Inventories of finished goods: Future (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 surveyd by the FED, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for inventories of finished goods (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) was 5.0 in September 2025, compared to 9.0 in August.
Sample. The monthly time series shown in the figure has 259 records. The span of time covered by the series goes from January 1997 to September 2025.
History. Have a look at some descriptive statistics we computed on the whole sample: the diffusion index reached a minimum of -44.0 in August 2000; it recorded a maximum of 16.0 in August 2015; it had a mean value of -3.3.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-07-31 | 10.0 |
| 2025-08-31 | 9.0 |
| 2025-09-30 | 5.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will finished goods inventories increase or decrease over the next six months? |
| Country | United States |
| Economic concept | Business survey response |
| Data type | Leading 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) |