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) stood at -9.0 in January 2026, the same value recorded in December 2025.
Sample. In the monthly series displayed in the chart, there are 183 records overall. The span of time covered by the series stretches from February 2010 to January 2026.
History. Here’s a quick look at some simple statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index had an average value of 0.1; it hit a minimum of -72.0 in April 2020; it peaked at 32.0 in April 2017.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-11-30 | -19.0 |
| 2025-12-31 | -9.0 |
| 2026-01-31 | -9.0 |
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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) |
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