Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Local business conditions: 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 local business conditions (share of CEOs seeing a recent improvement minus share reporting a worsening) was -15.0 in February 2026, compared to -8.0 in January 2026.
Sample. In the monthly time series shown in the figure, there are 184 data points in total. The time span covered by the series extends from February 2010 to February 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of some summary statistics we calculated on the whole sample: the diffusion index had a mean of 0.1; it recorded its maximum of 32.0 in November 2017; it recorded a minimum of -82.0 in April 2020.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-12-31 | -9.0 |
| 2026-01-31 | -8.0 |
| 2026-02-28 | -15.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did local business conditions improve or worsen 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) |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.