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Global Reach David
Census HQ
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"I work in a library that gets a lot of trade questions and one that periodically comes up is: how data is reported dollars v. measure (tonnage, etc.). Other than at the commodity level, does Census (or anyone) report higher level data by the measure as opposed to dollars?"
Each 10 digit commodity code is assigned a unit of measure (unit of quantity) that will be most informative to the industry when it is aggregated for the month or year etc. This can be inconvenient at times when a product is being invoiced by piece but the unit of quantity is in kg however, a box of bolts from one company may be 10 times the size of a box of bolts from another company.
Commodity headings and subheadings may contain various units of quantity at the ten-digit level and will not allow for a simple additive summary. My best suggestion would be to use a resource like USATRADONLINE.GOV or DATAWEB.USITC.GOV and extract the data at the ten digit level and summarize it in a program like Excel, making sure to account for differences in quantity.
I hope this answers your question and I am sorry it isn't more convenient to get the higher level quantity information. Also, there may be a third party company that provides this service, but I am personally unaware of one.
A Mountain of Data
By David Many of you know how important the big 2010 Decennial Census is, and how it's just around the corner. The data collected will be used to make projections and aid budget decisions for the next ten years. Sometimes, it can be hard to understand how data collected in 2000 is still relevant...
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