Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Shipments: 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. Based on a sample of manufacturing firms surveyed by the Fed, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for shipments (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) was 0.0 in October 2026, compared to -1.0 in September.
Sample. There are 396 observations in the monthly series presented in the plot above. The series covers the time span extending from November 1993 to October 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of a few statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index was equal on average to 2.7; it hit a maximum of 46.0 in March 2004; it recorded a minimum of -59.0 in January 2009.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-08-31 | 9.00000 |
| 2026-09-30 | -1.00000 |
| 2026-10-31 | 0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did shipments increase or decrease 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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