WASHINGTON, DC — Statistics recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau provide a snapshot of e-commerce activity for key sectors of the U.S. economy for 2000. The data came from over 125,000 manufacturing, wholesale, retail, and services businesses.

Some highlights include:

  • Business-to-business e-commerce dominates.

  • E-commerce grew in all sectors.

  • Electronic data interchange (EDI) plays a critical role in supporting business-to-business e-commerce.

    The dollar value of e-commerce and the share of economic activity vary substantially among key economic sectors:

  • Manufacturing leads all industry sectors with e-commerce shipments that account for 18.4% ($777 billion) of the total value of shipments.

  • Wholesalers rank second with e-commerce sales that represent 7.7% ($213 billion) of total sales.

  • Retail, which has been the focus of much e-commerce attention, had e-commerce sales in 2000 that account for 0.9% ($29 billion) of total retail sales.

  • E-commerce revenues for selected service industries accounted for 0.8% ($37 billion) of total revenues for these industries.

    Publication date: 04/01/2002