Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders (M3)

The monthly M3 estimates are based on information obtained from most manufacturing companies with $500 million or more in annual shipments. In order to strengthen the sample coverage in individual industry categories, the survey includes selected smaller companies. The sources from which companies are identified for inclusion in the survey panel are the quinquennial economic censuses, manufacturing sector, and the Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM). For firms that operate in a single M3 industry category, the reporting unit typically comprises all operations of the company. Most large, diversified companies, however, file separate reports for divisions with significant activity in different industrial areas. The composition of each company or reporting unit of a company in the survey usually includes more than one plant or establishment and frequently includes industry activities outside the M3 category in which it is classified. The survey methodology described later in this chapter assumes that the month-to-month changes of the total operations of the reporting units classified in each industry category effectively represent the month-to-month movements of all establishments that make up the category. In 1962, the initially selected sample for this survey included all companies with more than 1,000 employees and smaller companies selected with probabilities proportional to their employment size within each industry category. As there was some deterioration in response rates for companies with between 100 and 1,000 employees, in January 1975, the staff selected a supplemental sample of approximately 1,000 companies from the universe of companies in this size range in order to strengthen the estimates. Although the response rate was only about 60 percent for this...

There are 89 separately tabulated industry categories in the M3 survey. These categories are groupings of the 473 manufacturing industries as defined in the 1997 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Manual. Chapter B lists these categories. Because companies provide data on a voluntary basis, reporting in many of these 89 categories is not sufficient to warrant separate publication of the data. Consolidated reporting by some large companies also limits the quality of the data in some categories. A company that reports on a consolidated basis (entire company or a division) is included in the M3 category in which the reporting unit as a whole is classified and has no influence on the movement of the other industries which may be included in its combined report. As a result, it has been necessary to combine the 89 industry categories into 59 publication levels for shipments and total inventories. For new and unfilled orders and inventories by stage of fabrication, it has been necessary to introduce further combinations because of the lower response rates for those items.

To link to external business data, also request County Business Patterns Business Register.. ALPHA (Census firm ID). Permanent Plant Number (PPN, Census establishment ID)

• Employer Identification Number (EIN)
• State abbreviation
• Zip code
• Other (see Linkage Capabilities description)