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FOR WIRE TRANSMISSION 10:00 A.M. EST, Tuesday, March 15, 2005 CB05-29

MANUFACTURING AND TRADE INVENTORIES AND SALES
January 2005

INTENTION TO REVISE: Revisions to the Retail and Wholesale adjusted and unadjusted monthly estimates for sales and inventories are scheduled for release on March 31, 2005. Estimates will be revised to reflect the results of the 2003 annual surveys, as well as the preliminary results of the 2002 Economic Census. Manufacturing estimates will be revised at a later date. Revisions to the Retail and Wholesale data will be reflected in the February 2005 Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales release scheduled for April 14, 2005.

Sales. The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that the combined value of distributive trade sales and manufacturers’ shipments for January, adjusted for seasonal and trading-day differences but not for price changes, was estimated at $994.5 billion, up 0.8 percent (±0.3%) from December and up 11.1 percent (±0.4%) from January 2004.

Inventories. Manufacturers’ and trade inventories adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated at an end-of-month level of $1,290.6 billion, up 0.9 percent (±0.2%) from December and up 8.6 percent (±2.1%) from January 2004.

Inventories/Sales Ratio. The total business inventories/sales ratio based on seasonally adjusted data at the end of January was 1.30. The January 2004 ratio was 1.33.

The Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales Report for February is scheduled for release April 14, 2005 at 8:30 a.m. EDT

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. December data was released February 3 for Manufacturers and February 9 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.

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 no sampling 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 no response. 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: March 15, 2005

Source: Retail Indicators Branch, U.S. Census Bureau
Last Revised: May 21, 2004

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