EMBARGOED UNTIL: 12:01 A.M. EDT, MAY 26, 1999 (WEDNESDAY)
Public Information Office CB99-96
301-457-3030/301-457-3670 (fax)
301-457-1037 (TDD)
e-mail: pio@census.gov
John Trimble
301-457-2725
Wholesale Sales of Petroleum and Petroleum Products
Near $800 Million in Wyoming in 1997, Census Bureau Reports
Wyoming's 83 petroleum and petroleum products wholesalers recorded sales
of $799 million in 1997, thirty-one percent of the state's wholesale sales
for all industries of $2.5 billion, according to a report released today
on the Internet by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.
The report, 1997 Economic Census, Geographic Area Series,
Wholesale Trade: Wyoming, is the first in a series of state reports
from the 1997 Economic Census on Wholesale Trade.
While the petroleum and petroleum-product industry accounted for
thirty-one percent of wholesale trade statewide, its 498 employees
comprised less than 1 in 10 of the state's 5,761 wholesale-trade workers.
Its 83 locations accounted for 10 percent of the state's 800
wholesale-trade establishments.
Other large state wholesalers in Wyoming in 1997 were machinery,
equipment and supplies ($634.9 million), farm-product raw material ($317.8
million) and grocery and related products ($115.6 million). Machinery,
equipment and supplies wholesalers employed 2,047 people at 254 sites;
farm-product raw material wholesalers employed 244 people at 21 sites and
grocery and related products wholesalers employed 490 people at 75 sites.
About 39 percent ($984 million) of Wyoming's wholesalers' sales took place
in the Casper metropolitan area.
The 1997 Economic Census marks the premiere of a new classification
system called the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS),
which replaces the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system begun
60 years ago.
"The United States developed this system jointly with Canada and Mexico,
making it much easier to compare data with our North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) partners," said Frederick Knickerbocker, the Census
Bureau's associate director for economic programs. "It is also a system
that is much easier to update, so that economic data can keep pace with
the nation's changing economy."
The NAICS wholesale trade sector includes much of what was classified in
wholesale trade under the SIC system. Establishments that were previously
classified in wholesale trade that sell merchandise using facilities open
to the general public are now classified in the retail trade sector.
Prominent examples of establishments shifting sectors are automotive parts
merchants, computer and peripheral equipment merchants, office supplies
merchants, farm supplies merchants and building materials merchants.
The report released today shows 1997 statistics for Wyoming on the
number of locations, sales, annual and first-quarter payroll, employment,
operating expenses and beginning and ending inventories for specific
Wholesale Trade industries. It also shows data for each of the state's 23
counties, its 22 most populous places, its two metropolitan areas and all
nonmetropolitan areas in the state. The remaining state reports will
follow over the next nine months.
All data compiled for the Wholesale Trade sector are subject to
nonsampling errors. Nonsampling errors can be attributed to many sources:
inability to identify all cases in the actual universe; definition and
classification difficulties; differences in the interpretation of
questions; errors in recording or coding the data obtained; and other
errors of collection, response, coverage, processing and estimation for
missing or misreported data.
-X-
The U.S. Census Bureau, pre-eminent collector and disseminator of timely,
relevant and quality data about the people and the economy of the United
States, conducts a population and housing census every 10 years, an
economic census every five years and more than 100 demographic and
economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the first census in
1790.
