Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Local business conditions: Future (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 recent survey data about manufacturing firms in the Fifth District, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for local business conditions (share of CEOs seeing a future improvement minus share forecasting a worsening) stood at 19.0 in January 2026, compared to 16.0 in December 2025.
Sample. In the monthly time series presented in the graph, there are 183 observations. The time period covered by the series goes from February 2010 to January 2026.
History. Check out a few descriptive statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index reached a minimum of -34.0 in April 2020; it reached its maximum of 54.0 in June 2020; it had a mean value of 21.6.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-11-30 | 1.0 |
| 2025-12-31 | 16.0 |
| 2026-01-31 | 19.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will local business conditions improve or worsen over the next six months? |
| Country | United States |
| Economic concept | Business survey response |
| Data type | Leading 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.