Nonmanufacturing Business Outlook Survey (NBOS)	Series Definition							
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadadelphia	

January 2016 
 
								
Below are variables names and definitions for the historical monthly NBOS data 
found in the NBOS history EXCEL (.xls) files. 	
				
The "Diffusion" tab includes full history (back to March 2011) of all of the NBOS diffusion 
indexes, which represent the percentage of respondents reporting increases minus percentage of
respondents reporting decreases.															
The "Responses_and_Diffusion" tab contains all aggregate series, including the  percentage of 
firms reporting increases, decreases, and no change, as well as the diffusion indexes.														
Starting in January 2016 the series in the "Diffusion" 	and "Responses_and_Diffusion" tabs are
reported in seasonally adjusted terms, and use "_sa" suffixes.  The "NSA" tab has the complete 
set of unadjusted data.
											
Variable names are based on the prefixes and suffixes defined below, plus "_sa" when seasonally
adjusted.
															
NBOS  prefixes and definitions:

GARBN	General Activity - Region
GABN	General Activity - Company
NOBN	New Orders
SRBN	Sales or Revenues
UOBN	Unfilled Orders
IVBN	Inventories
PPBN	Prices Paid
PRBN	Prices Received
NFBN	Number of Employees - Full-Time Permanent
NPBN	Number of Employees - Part-Time, Temporary, & Contract
AWBN	Average Employee Workweek
WBBN	Wages and Benefit Costs
CPBN	Capital Expenditures - Physical Plant
CEBN	Capital Expenditures - Equipment & Software
GARF	Future General Activity - Region
GAFBN	Future General Activity - Company	


NBOS suffixes and definitions:

dif	Diffusion Index
inc	Percentage of respondents that reported Increasing
dec	Percentage of repsondents that reported Decreasing
nc	Percentage of respondents that reported No change


EXAMPLES: 

garbninc     Percentage reporting increasing general activity in region
garbndif_sa  Diffusion index (garbninc-garbndec) for general activity in region, seasonally adjusted