Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Unfilled orders: 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. Based on a sample of manufacturing firms surveyed by the Fed, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for unfilled orders (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) stood at 7.0 in October 2026, compared to 2.0 in the previous month.
Sample. The monthly time series shown in the graph has 354 observations. The series covers the period extending from May 1997 to October 2026.
History. Here's a peek at a few statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index reached a minimum of -31.0 in April 2020; it attained a maximum of 39.0 in February 2002; it averaged 10.9.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-08-31 | 6.00000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 2.00000 |
| 2026-10-31 | 7.00000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will unfilled orders 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) |
Series in the same data set
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