Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey: General business activity: Future (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. According to recent survey data about manufacturing firms in the Third Federal Reserve District, the seasonally unadjusted diffusion index for general business activity (share of CEOs seeing a future increase minus share forecasting a decrease) was 31.0 in July 2026, compared to 37.5 in the previous month.
Sample. There are 699 data points overall in the monthly series shown in the figure above. The series covers the time range stretching from May 1968 to July 2026.
History. Have a look at some descriptive statistics we calculated on the full sample: the diffusion index averaged 33.9; it recorded a minimum of -49.0 in December 1973; it attained a maximum of 90.6 in June 1975.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2026-05-31 | 46.2 |
| 2026-06-30 | 37.5 |
| 2026-07-31 | 31.0 |
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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 | 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) |
Series in the same data set
Discover the other time series included in this data set.