Business and Industry

Revised historical data for Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders were issued on May 17, 2013. These revisions reflect: benchmarking the shipments and inventories data to the 2011 Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) data, as well as revised ASM benchmarks for prior years; incorporating the unfilled orders to shipments ratios obtained from the 2010/2011 Manufacturers’ Unfilled Orders Survey by applying these ratios to the respective ASM shipments data, as well as incorporating revised unfilled orders to shipments ratios for prior years; adjusting the new orders data to be consistent with the benchmarked shipments and unfilled orders data; correcting monthly data for late receipts, reclassifications of reported data, and revisions to previously reported data; migrating the data processing environment from a server having a Linux Red Hat 4 operating system that supports SAS® 9.1.3 to a server having a Linux Red Hat 5 operating system that supports SAS® 9.2; and updating the seasonally adjusted data, based on the results of benchmarking and the recent annual review of the seasonal adjustment models.

For the Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders Survey, all current month estimates are preliminary estimates and will be superseded in following months by revised estimates.

For information on survey methodology and use of the data, including seasonal adjustment and other information pertinent to this economic indicator, go to the Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders website, which provides a link to historical data.

The Y-axis for the line charts may be truncated to prevent flattening of the lines or to present the complete range of data.