This section presents statistics relating to the distributive trades, specifically wholesale trade and retail trade. Data shown for the trades are classified by kind of business and cover sales or receipts, establishments, employees, payrolls, and other items. The principal sources of these data are from the Census Bureau and include the 1997 Economic Census reports,annual survey reports, and the CountyBusiness Patterns program. These data are supplemented by several tables from trade associations, such as the National Automobile Dealers Association (Table 1034). Several notable research groups are also represented, such as Claritas (Table 1032), National Research Bureau and the International Council of Shopping Centers (Tables 1047 and 1048), Jupiter Media Matrix (Table 1042), and Forrester Research, Inc. (Table 1041).

ta on retail and wholesale trade appear in several other sections. For instance, labor force employment and earnings data appear in Section 12, Labor Force, Employment, and Earnings; gross domestic product of the industry (Table 660) appear in the Section 13, Income, Expenditures, and Wealth; financial data (several tables) from the quarterly Statistics of Income Bulletin, published by the Internal Revenue Service, appear in Section 15, Business Enterprise.

Censuses-Censuses of retail trade and wholesale trade have been taken at various intervals since 1929. Beginning with the 1967 census, legislation provides for a census of each area to be conducted every 5 years (for years ending in ‘‘2’’ and ‘‘7’’). For more information on these censuses, see the History of the 1997 Economic Census found at <http://www.census.gov/prod/ec97/pol00-hec.pdf>.The industries covered in the censuses and surveys of business are those classified in 13 sectors defined in the NorthAmerican Industry Classification System, called NAICS (see below). Retail trade refers to places of business primarily engaged in retailing merchandise generally in small quantities to the general public; and wholesale trade, to establishments primarily engaged in selling goods to other businesses and normally operate from a warehouse or office that have little or no display of merchandise. All Census Bureau tables in this section are utilizing the new NAICS codes, which replaced the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. NAICS makes substantial structural improvements and identifies over 350 new industries. At the same time, it causes breaks in time series far more profound than any prior revision of the previously used SIC system. For information on this system and how it affects the comparability of retail and wholesale statistics historically, see text, Section 15, Business Enterprise, and especially the Census Bureau Web site at <http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html>. In general, the 1997 Economic Census has two series of publications and documents for these two sectors subject series with reports on such as commodity line sales and establishment and firm sizes and geographic reports with individual reports for each state. For information on these series, see the Census Bureau Web site at <http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/97EC42.htm> and <http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/97EC44.htm>.

Current surveys-Current sample surveys conducted by the Census Bureau cover various aspects of the retail and wholesale trade. Its Monthly Retail Trade and Food Services contains monthly estimates of sales, inventories, and inventory/sales ratios, purchases, and accounts receivable for the United States, by kind of business. Annual figures on sales, year-end inventories, and inventory/sales ratios, purchases, and accounts receivable, by kind of business, appear in the Annual Benchmark Report for Retail Trade and Food Services. Statisticsfrom the Bureau’s monthly wholesale trade survey include national estimates of merchant wholesalers’ sales, inventories, and inventory/sales ratios by major summary groups ‘‘durable and nondurable,’’ and four-digit NAICS industry groups. Merchant wholesalers are those wholesalers who take title to the goods they sell (e.g., jobbers, exporters, importers, industrial distributors). These data, based on reports submitted by a sample of firms, appear in the Monthly Wholesale Trade Report. Annual figures on sales, inventory/sales ratios, year-end inventories, and purchases appear in the AnnualBenchmark Report for Wholesale Trade. The reports just mentioned may appear in print in some cases, but principally are available as documents on the Census Bureau Web site at <http://www.census.gov/econ/www/retmenu.html>.

E-commerce-Electronic commerce (or e-commerce) are sales of goods and services over the Internet and extranet, electronic data interchange (EDI), or other online systems. Payment may or may not be made online. This edition has several tables on e-commerce sales, such as Tables 1044 to 1046 in this section, 989 in Section 21, Manufactures, and 1268 in Section 27, Accommodation, Food Services, and Other Services. Also, there are several private sources for similar data such as Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge MA; BizRate.com, Los Angeles, CA; and Jupiter Media Matrix, New York, NY. These sources show estimated and projected online retail sales by key categories from business to consumers or to other businesses. Their methods of collecting the data vary widely between the sources and consequently these estimates of this activity vary also. Users of these estimates may want to contact the sources for descriptions of their methodology. Methodology for Census Bureau estimates can be found at <www.census.gov/estats>.

Statistical reliability-For a discussion of statistical collection and estimation, sampling procedures, and measures of statistical reliability applicable to Census Bureau data, see Appendix III.