Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, & Orders

Notice: Revised historical data from the Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders (M3) Survey will be issued on May 14, 2021. These revisions result from: benchmarking the M3 shipments and inventories data to the 2019 and 2018 Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) data, as well as to revised ASM data from 2013 through 2016, resulting from benchmarking the ASM to the 2017 Economic Census; incorporating the unfilled orders to shipments ratios obtained for 2019 and 2018 from the Manufacturers’ Unfilled Orders (M3UFO) 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; updating the seasonally adjusted data based on the results of benchmarking and the recent annual review of the seasonal adjustment models. These revisions will span the seasonally adjusted data for January 2007 through March 2021 and the data not seasonally adjusted for January 2012 through March 2021. An updated Press Release will contain revised monthly tables for January 2021 through March 2021.

Statement Regarding COVID-19 Impact: The Census Bureau continues to monitor response and data quality and has determined that estimates in these releases meet publication standards. For more information on the compilation of this month's reports, see M3 COVID-19 FAQs. M3COVID19FAQs.pdf 

FRED Mobile App: Receive the latest updates on the nation's key economic indicators by downloading the FRED App for both Apple and Android devices. FRED, the signature database of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, now incorporates the Census Bureau's 13 economic indicators.

New Time Series: Beginning with the release of June 2018 data on July 26, 2018, historical estimates of the Monthly Advance Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders are available on a seasonally adjusted basis as well as a not seasonally adjusted basis in the Search Database.

The URL for the economic indicators data in the Census Bureau API (Application Programming Interface) has been updated to add /timeseries/. Examples can be found on the Developers' webpage.

The upcoming release dates:

March Advance Report: April 26, 2021 8:30 a.m.

March Full Report: May 4, 2021 10:00 a.m.

2020-2021 Release Schedule:  Excel  [30kb]

If you have questions, e-mail or call (301)763-4832.