Business and Industry

For the Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales Report, all current month estimates are preliminary estimates, which will be superseded in following months by revised estimates. NA is provided for all future, unpublished months.

The Manufacturing and Trade Inventory and Sales estimates are based on data from three surveys: The Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS), the Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS), and the Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders Survey (M3). Provided as measures of sampling variability are coefficients of variation (CV) for totals and standard errors (SE) for month-to-month percent change and ratio estimates, except in the following instances: For Manufacturers, SEs and CVs of the industry estimates cannot be calculated due to the fact that M3's mail panel is not a probability sample. Consequently, Manufacturers sampling error estimates are not available. Also at this time, Total Business SEs are unavailable for month-to-month percent change and ratio estimates.

For information on the reliability and use of the data, including important notes on estimation and sampling variance, seasonal adjustment, measures of sampling variability, and other information pertinent to this economic indicator, go to the Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales website, which provides time-series excel files for Adjusted and Not Adjusted data.

Estimated measures of sampling variability are based on data not adjusted for seasonal variation, and should be used when drawing inferences about both adjusted and not adjusted estimates.

NA = Not available.