Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Number of employees: 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 survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for the number of employees (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) was 1.0 in September 2025, compared to 3.0 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 290 records overall in the monthly time series presented in the figure above. The series covers the time period going from January 1993 to September 2025.
History. Here are some simple statistics we computed on the full sample: the diffusion index recorded a bottom of -17.0 in February 2008; it hit a maximum of 53.0 in July 2021; it had a mean of 10.7.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-07-31 | -10.0 |
| 2025-08-31 | 3.0 |
| 2025-09-30 | 1.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will the number of employees increase or decrease 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) |