Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity: Wages: 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 based in the Fifth District, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for wages (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 48.0 in September 2025, versus 47.0 in August 2025.
Sample. The monthly time series displayed in the figure has 259 records. The series covers the time span extending from January 1997 to September 2025.
History. Here's a peek at a few simple statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index reached a minimum of 0.0 in April 2020; it reached a maximum of 73.0 in February 2021; it averaged 37.3.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-07-31 | 46.0 |
| 2025-08-31 | 47.0 |
| 2025-09-30 | 48.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will wages 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) |