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. Based on firms' responses to the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey carried out by the Philadelphia FED, the seasonally adjusted diffusion index for shipments (share of CEOs seeing a recent increase minus share reporting a decrease) stood at 6.0 in October 2025, compared to 26.1 in September.
Sample. This monthly series has 690 records in total. The time range covered by the series stretches from May 1968 to October 2025.
History. Check out a few statistics we calculated on the entire sample: the diffusion index reached a maximum of 48.3 in March 1973; it hit a trough of -74.8 in April 2020; it had a mean of 13.0.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Percentage points |
|---|---|
| 2025-08-31 | 4.5 |
| 2025-09-30 | 26.1 |
| 2025-10-31 | 6.0 |
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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) |