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) stood at -8.0 in January 2026, versus -9.0 in December 2025.
Sample. There are 183 observations overall in the monthly series shown in the figure above. The time range covered by the series stretches from February 2010 to January 2026.
History. Here's a snapshot of some simple statistics we computed on the full sample: the diffusion index was equal on average to 0.2; it hit a trough of -82.0 in April 2020; it achieved a maximum of 32.0 in November 2017.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-11-30 | -20.0 |
| 2025-12-31 | -9.0 |
| 2026-01-31 | -8.0 |
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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) |
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