Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Inventories of raw materials: 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 survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for inventories of raw materials (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) was 1.0 in July 2026, compared to 8.0 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 353 data points overall in the monthly series shown in the figure above. The period covered by the series goes from January 1997 to July 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of some simple statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index hit a minimum of -25.0 in July 2021; it recorded a maximum of 36.0 in February 2016; it had a mean of 14.8.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-05-31 | 5.0 |
| 2026-06-30 | 8.0 |
| 2026-07-31 | 1.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did raw materials 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 | 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) |
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