Wholesale Trade

Wholesale Trade is the dollar value of sales made and of inventories held by merchant wholesalers. It is one of the components of business inventories. Statistics include sales, inventories, and stock/sale ratios, collected via mail-out/mail-back survey of about 7,100 selected wholesale firms. Data is both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted. Firms are first stratified by merchant wholesale sales, inventories and major kind of business (determined from the latest census of wholesale trade). All firms with wholesale sales or inventories above applicable size cutoffs for each major kind of business are included in the survey. The sample is updated every quarter to reflect "births" and "deaths," adding new employer businesses identified in the business and professional classification survey and dropping companies that are no longer active wholesalers. Wholesale trade inventories and the inventories-to-sales ratio are important and timely indicators of current consumption, and of future manufacturing activity. However, because it is a survey, sampling errors are probable and the interpretation of questions can lead to inaccurate results. Also, the annual benchmark can change long term interpretation of inventory trends. Monthly wholesale trade, sales and inventories reports are released six weeks after the close of the reference month. They contain preliminary current month figures and final figures for the previous month. The Wholesale Trade report is scheduled for release at 9:00 (CST), mid-month by the Bureau of the Census.

POTENTIAL IMPACT ON INTEREST RATES: LOW