Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey: General business activity: Future (increase vs decrease; diffusion index; percentage points; seasonally adjusted) - United States - Philly FED - Monthly
This series is part of the dataset: Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey (Philly FED)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. According to survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for general business activity (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) stood at 34.4 in July 2026, compared to 50.2 in the previous month.
Sample. In the monthly series plotted above, there are 699 data points. The span of time covered by the series goes from May 1968 to July 2026.
History. Here are some descriptive statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index attained a maximum of 91.0 in September 1975; it hit a minimum of -39.7 in December 1973; it was equal on average to 33.8.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-05-31 | 53.2 |
| 2026-06-30 | 50.2 |
| 2026-07-31 | 34.4 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Will general business activity 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 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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