Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Local business conditions: Current (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. According to survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for local business conditions (share of CEOs seeing a recent improvement minus share reporting a worsening) was 12.0 in April 2026, versus -2.0 in March.
Sample. There are 186 observations overall in the monthly time series shown in the figure above. The series covers the time period going from February 2010 to April 2026.
History. Take a look at a few descriptive statistics computed on the full sample: the diffusion index recorded a minimum of -72.0 in April 2020; it achieved a maximum of 32.0 in April 2017; it was equal on average to 0.1.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-02-28 | -12.0 |
| 2026-03-31 | -2.0 |
| 2026-04-30 | 12.0 |
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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 | 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
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