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) stood at 1.0 in May 2026, the same as in April.
Sample. The monthly time series displayed in the plot has 351 data points in total. The time span covered by the series extends from January 1997 to May 2026.
History. Check out a few statistics calculated on the full sample: the diffusion index reached a minimum of -44.0 in August 2000; it reached its maximum of 16.0 in August 2015; it had a mean of -3.2.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-31 | 3.0 |
| 2026-04-30 | 1.0 |
| 2026-05-31 | 1.0 |
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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) |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.