Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey: Number of employees: 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. According to survey data about manufacturers collected by the Federal Reserve in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for the number of employees (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 9.7 in January 2026, compared to 13.0 in December 2025.
Sample. This monthly time series has 693 records overall. The series covers the period extending from May 1968 to January 2026.
History. Take a look at a few descriptive statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index was equal on average to 2.2; it recorded a maximum of 39.6 in April 2022; it recorded a bottom of -51.8 in March 2009.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-11-30 | 7.4 |
| 2025-12-31 | 13.0 |
| 2026-01-31 | 9.7 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did the number of employees 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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