Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Vendor lead times: Current (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 vendor lead times (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 12.0 in November 2025, compared to 6.0 in October 2025.
Sample. There are 355 observations in the monthly time series presented in the plot above. The time period covered by the series extends from January 1996 to November 2025.
History. Here's a glimpse of a few statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index had a mean value of 6.3; it recorded its maximum of 67.0 in May 2021; it hit a minimum of -29.0 in December 2022.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-09-30 | 10.0 |
| 2025-10-31 | 6.0 |
| 2025-11-30 | 12.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did vendor lead times 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 | 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) |
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