Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey: Shipments: 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 based in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for shipments (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 9.5 in January 2026, compared to 3.2 in December 2025.
Sample. There are 693 observations overall in the monthly series presented in the chart above. The span of time covered by the series is from May 1968 to January 2026.
History. Here's a glimpse of a few simple statistics we computed on the entire sample: the diffusion index had a mean value of 13.0; it reached a minimum of -74.2 in April 2020; it reached its maximum of 48.3 in March 1973.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-11-30 | -1.2 |
| 2025-12-31 | 3.2 |
| 2026-01-31 | 9.5 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Diffusion index for the question: Did shipments 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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