FOR WIRE TRANSMISSION 10:00 A.M. ET, Friday, October 15, 2004 CB-04-172
Sales. The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that the combined value of distributive trade sales and manufacturers’ shipments for August, adjusted for seasonal and trading-day differences but not for price changes, were estimated at $955.9 billion, up 0.7 percent (±0.2%) from July and up 10.9 percent (±0.4%) from August 2003.
Inventories. Manufacturers’ and trade inventories adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated at an end-of-month level of $1,256.4 billion, up 0.7 percent (±0.2%) from July and up 7.7 percent (±2.2%) from August 2003.
Inventories/Sales Ratio. The total business inventories/sales ratio based on seasonally adjusted data at the end of August was 1.31. The August 2003 ratio was 1.35.
The Manufacturing and
Trade Inventories and Sales Report for September is scheduled for release November
12, 2004 at 10:00 a.m.
Questions concerning this report may be addressed to: Scott Scheleur (301) 763-2713
(Retail), Chris Savage (301) 763-4834 (Manufacturing), or Nancy Piesto (301)
763-2747 (Wholesale). Electronic inquiries may be sent to: retail.trade@census.gov.
The wholesale and manufacturing data in this report also appear in the following monthly Census Bureau publications: Current Industrial Reports (see M3 series for manufacturers data) and Current Business Reports (see BW series for merchant wholesalers). Retail data are available on the Census website at http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/mrts.html. August data was released October 4 for Manufacturers and October 8 for merchant wholesalers. The data are also available the day of issue on the Internet - http://www.census.gov/bussales - and on Department of Commerce’s STAT-USA website; for information, call (202) 482-1986.
Table 1. Estimated
Monthly Sales and Inventories for Manufacturers, Retailers, and Merchant Wholesalers
(In millions of dollars)
See footnotes and notes at the end of table
3.
(p) Preliminary.
(r) Revised.
(s) Adjusted data were revised due to concurrent seasonal adjustment. No revisions
were made to Not Adjusted data.
Table 2. Percent Changes for Sales and Inventories--Manufacturers, Retailers, and Merchant Wholesalers
Table 3. Estimated Monthly Retail Sales, Inventories, and Inventories/Sales
Ratios, By Kind of Business
(In millions of dollars)
(p) Preliminary.
(r) Revised.
(s) Adjusted data were revised due to concurrent seasonal adjustment. No revisions
were made to Not Adjusted data.
1 Inventories are on a non-LIFO basis as of the end of the month.
2 Adjusted for seasonal variations and, in the case of sales, for trading-day
differences and holiday variations. Concurrent seasonal adjustment is being
used to adjust all sales, shipment, and inventory estimates. Concurrent seasonal
adjustment uses all available unadjusted estimates as input to the X-12-ARIMA
program. The factors derived from the program are applied to the current and
previous month estimates and for retail and wholesale estimates a year ago as
well. For retail sales, concurrent seasonal adjustment is also used to adjust
the advance estimates (published one month before the preliminary estimates)
and the estimates one year before the advance month. This explains the revision
to retail estimates from a year ago
3 Manufacturers sales refer to the value of shipments by manufacturers.
The shipments data from individual manufacturers are adjusted prior to tabulation
for the number of trading days as well as for any variations in the length of
the reporting period.
Note: U.S. and group totals include kinds of business not shown. The Manufacturing and Trade Inventory and Sales estimates are based on data from three surveys: the Monthly Retail Trade Survey, the Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey, and the Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders Survey. The sampling variability for retailers and merchant wholesalers can be used to construct a 90 percent confidence interval for the estimates. Over all possible samples, 90 percent of such intervals will cover the true estimate. These intervals are given in parentheses for the estimates on the front page. If, for example, the estimate is up 0.8 percent and the margin of sampling error is ±1.2 percent, the 90 percent confidence interval is -0.4 percent to +2.0 percent. If the range contains 0, it is uncertain whether there was an increase or decrease. Measures of reliability for Retail and Wholesale sales and inventory levels and changes are included in the detailed monthly press releases for those industries. Manufacturers do not contribute to estimates of sampling variability because the manufacturer’s mail panel is not a probability sample from a known frame and standard errors of the industry estimates cannot be calculated. Estimates from all three surveys are also subject to nonsampling errors, which can arise in any stage of the survey. Such errors include coverage error (failure to accurately represent all population units in the sample), response errors, coding errors, and nonresponse. Although no direct measurement of these errors has been obtained, precautionary steps were taken in all phases of the collection, processing, and tabulation of the data to minimize their influence.
Source: Retail Indicators Branch,
U.S. Census Bureau | Last Revised: October 15, 2004
