The term commodities is used in this chapter in its broad sense, to refer generally to tangible goods of all sorts that are bought and sold, rather than the narrower sense of raw agricultural products and mineral resources in which it is sometimes used. In fact, those two particular types of commodities, by and large, are not covered in this chapter: most data sources on agricultural commodities are covered in chapter 3, and data for petroleum, coal, and other fossil fuels is primarily found in chapter 18.
Major Sources: United States
Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders (U.S. Census Bureau)
The Census Bureau publishes Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders (sometimes called “M3,” www.census.gov/manufacturing/m3/), a monthly survey that provides data on the value of new orders, unfilled orders, shipments, and inventories from manufacturers in the United States. Data from this survey is available online from 1958 to present, so it is an excellent time series. However, the data is not particularly granular; only eighty-nine categories are available for this survey, ranging from “Apparel” and “Household Appliances” to “Ships and Boats” and “Construction Machinery.”
Annual Survey of Manufactures (U.S. Census Bureau)
The Annual Survey of Manufactures (www.census.gov/manufacturing/asm/, see chapter 10) is another source for data on the production of goods in the United States. The data is available only annually, and it includes only the values of shipments, but it covers hundreds of granular categories—not just household appliances, for example, but specifically cooking appliances, refrigerators and home freezers, laundry equipment, and so on.
Current Industrial Reports (U.S. Census Bureau)
Prior to 2011, Current Industrial Reports (www.census.gov/manufacturing/cir/index.html), a project of the U.S. Census Bureau, published granular data on the production of various commodities, from flour to electrocardiograph machines, on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. It even had sixteen separate categories for socks, specifying whether the socks were for men, women, or infants and whether they were cotton, wool, manmade materials, or other materials. This program was discontinued because of budget constraints; the final data releases cover through July 2011. Only data for 2010 and the first half of 2011 are available on the Census Bureau’s website, but older data can be obtained in print at some federal depository libraries.
Major Sources: World
Industrial Commodity Statistics Database (United Nations Statistics Division)
The United Nations produces the Industrial Commodity Statistics Database, whose data is available via the UNdata site (http://data.un.org; see chapter 2). For around six hundred different items, from bulldozers to sunglasses, the database contains one or both of two annual measures of production: value (in U.S. dollars), and a measure of the physical quantity manufactured, such as metric tons or individual units. Data is available from 1995 to approximately four years from the current date.
UnctadStat (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development)
Another UN product, UnctadStat (http://unctadstat.unctad.org), provides prices and price indices for agricultural products (wheat, coffee, beef, wool, etc.) and minerals (lead, tin, gold, petroleum, etc.), with a long time series for this data—1960 to present for some commodities. An index representing instability in commodity prices is also available, 1983 to present.
Minor Sources
Financial Times
The Financial Times newspaper (http://markets.ft.com; free registration required) provides approximately five years of historical data on the prices of certain metals, fuels, and agricultural products, as well as European carbon emissions, in its “Data Archive.” This data set has one major drawback: information can be downloaded only one day at a time, in PDF files, so assembling a long time series is a time-consuming process.