Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey: Average employee workweek: Current (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally unadjusted) - United States - Philly FED - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey (Philly FED)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. Based on firms' responses to the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey carried out by the Philadelphia FED, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for the average employee workweek (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 10.7 in January 2026, compared to 7.7 in December 2025.
Sample. There are 693 observations in the monthly time series shown in the graph above. The period covered by the series is from May 1968 to January 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of some descriptive statistics we calculated on the whole sample: the diffusion index reached its minimum of -49.2 in April 2020; it hit a peak of 42.9 in March 2021; it had a mean of 0.2.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-11-30 | 0.0 |
| 2025-12-31 | 7.7 |
| 2026-01-31 | 10.7 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did the average employee workweek 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 Philadelphia |
| 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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