U.S. ECONOMY > American Industries > Retail > Retail Sales, by Kind of Business
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 2007, AT 10:00 A.M. EST
Scott Scheleur (Retail): (301) 763-2713
CB07-02
John Miller (Wholesale): (301) 763-2747
Chris Savage (Manufacturing): (301) 763-4832
MANUFACTURING
AND TRADE INVENTORIES AND SALES
NOVEMBER 2006
| INTENTION
TO REVISE: Revisions to the Retail and Wholesale adjusted and unadjusted monthly estimates for sales and inventories are scheduled for release the week of March 26, 2007. Estimates will be revised to reflect the results of the 2005 annual surveys. Manufacturing estimates will be revised at a later date. Revisions to the Retail and Wholesale data will be reflected in the February 2007 Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales release scheduled for April 16, 2007.
|
Sales.
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that the combined value of distributive trade sales and manufacturers' shipments for November, adjusted for seasonal and trading-day differences but not for price changes, was estimated at $1,051.4 billion, up 0.5 percent (¡¦.2%) from October and up 4.0 percent (¡¦.4%) from November 2005.
Inventories. Manufacturers' and trade inventories
adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated at
an end-of-month level of $1,368.2 billion, up 0.4 percent (¡¦.1%) from October
and up 6.9 percent (¡¦.6%) from November 2005.
Inventories/Sales Ratio. The total business
inventories/sales ratio based on seasonally adjusted data at the end of November
was 1.30. The November 2005 ratio was 1.27.
The scheduled release dates for 2007 are as follows: January 12, February 14, March 13, April 16, May 11, June 13, July 13, August 13, September 14, October 12, November 14, December 13.
The Manufacturing and
Trade Inventories and Sales Report for December is scheduled to be released
February 14, 2007 at 10:00 a.m. EST.
For information, visit the Census Bureau’s Web site at <http://www.census.gov/bussales>.
This report is also available the day of issue through the Department of Commerce’s
STAT-USA (202-482-1986).
* The 90 percent confidence interval includes
zero. The Census Bureau does not have sufficient statistical evidence to conclude
that the actual change is different from zero.
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.
