Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey: Inventories: Current (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. Based on firms' responses to the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey carried out by the Philadelphia FED, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for inventories (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 2.7 in November 2025, versus 5.4 in October 2025.
Sample. The monthly time series displayed in the chart has 691 observations. The time period covered by the series goes from May 1968 to November 2025.
History. Take a look at a few summary statistics we calculated on the full sample: the diffusion index had a mean value of -5.1; it attained a maximum of 27.9 in March 1973; it reached its minimum of -52.2 in March 2009.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-09-30 | 15.0 |
| 2025-10-31 | 5.4 |
| 2025-11-30 | 2.7 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did inventories 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 | 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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