Fifth District Survey of Non-Manufacturing Activity: Average wages: Future (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 Non-Manufacturing Activity (Richmond FED)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. According to recent survey data about nonmanufacturing firms in the Fifth District, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for average wages (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) stood at 51.0 in September 2026, the same value recorded in August.
Sample. There are 190 data points in the monthly time series presented in the plot above. The span of time covered by the series stretches from December 2010 to September 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of some descriptive statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index hit a trough of 0.0 in May 2020; it hit a peak of 71.0 in January 2022; it had a mean of 39.9.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-31 | 42.0000 |
| 2026-08-31 | 51.0000 |
| 2026-09-30 | 51.0000 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will average 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 | 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) |
| Other information | Not available |
Series in the same data set
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