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. Based on a sample of manufacturing firms surveyd by the FED, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for local business conditions (share of CEOs seeing a recent improvement minus share reporting a worsening) was -20.0 in November 2025, compared to -1.0 in October 2025.
Sample. There are 181 observations in the monthly series displayed in the chart above. The series covers the time span going from February 2010 to November 2025.
History. Have a look at a few statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index had an average value of 0.3; it reached its minimum of -82.0 in April 2020; it reached its highest level of 32.0 in November 2017.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-09-30 | -12.0 |
| 2025-10-31 | -1.0 |
| 2025-11-30 | -20.0 |
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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
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