Bureau of Labor Statistics > Productivity > Publications > Articles and Research

Expanded Retail Sector

BLS seeks to better understand the transformation of retail trade in the U.S. and to capture gains in productivity associated with shifts across industries. This expands measurement of retail activities beyond the bounds of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) framework to include retail-supporting industries, such as transportation and warehousing.

Our efforts to develop experimental measures for an expanded retail-related sector began by assigning shares of total work hours in transportation and warehousing (NAICS 48,49) to the retail trade sector (NAICS 44,45). Guided by feedback solicited through this page, we next explored the feasibility of a narrowed definition of an expanded retail-related sector that emphasizes the importance of the couriers and messengers industry (NAICS 492) as a piece of “last mile” delivery services.

About our measures:

Analysis
- Initial effort for expanded retail measures
- Inclusion of couriers and messengers (NAICS 492)
Background
- BLS is responding to recommendations^[1] from a commissioned study on retail transformation with the experimental measures presented on this page. Visit our other pages for margin retail measures and monthly retail measures.
Inquiries and Feedback
- BLS welcomes feedback and suggestions for these experimental retail measures. Feel free to contact us to share your thoughts.

Initial effort for expanded retail measures

The retail trade sector employed approximately 16.2 million people, or 12.6 percent of all total nonfarm business employees in 2022, with 24.7 billion hours worked. In the same year, the transportation and warehousing sector employed approximately 7.9 million people, or 6.1 percent of nonfarm business employees, with 15.1 billion hours worked. The couriers and messengers industry, an important piece of “last mile” delivery services, employed approximately 1.3 million people, or 1.0 percent of nonfarm business employees, with 2.1 billion hours worked.

Without data on how many workers in the transportation sector support retail trade specifically, we explored a range of assumptions starting from ten percent of transportation and warehousing hours worked up to 100 percent, as a lower and upper bound. The objective was to compare the BLS published measures of hours worked and labor productivity in the retail sector to a range of experimental expanded retail-related measures.

The charts below feature the progression of adding larger proportions of hours worked from transportation and warehousing to the retail sector. Since the quantity of goods sold does not change, output is the same for the published and experimental retail trade data. It is the inclusion of additional labor without change to output that results in a change in measured labor productivity.

Chart 1
Chart 2
Chart 3

The tables below display the annual percent changes^[2] in productivity and hours worked for different periods for the retail sector plus three approaches to apportioning hours from the transportation and warehousing sectors. In the 2000 to 2007 period, the annual differences in productivity change are slight. From 2007 to 2019, the increased growth in hours in the transportation and warehousing sectors causes a divergence in productivity measures among the different approaches. In the 2019 to 2022 period, adding increasing percentages of hours from the supporting industries further diminishes productivity growth.^[3]

Table 1. Annual labor productivity trends by period for the retail sector plus three approaches to adding shares of hours from the transportation and warehousing sectors
Industry Group	1990-2000	2000-2007	2007-2019	2019-2022
Retail sector only	3.67%	3.81%	2.61%	4.83%
Retail plus 10 percent of hours from transportation and warehousing	3.63%	3.80%	2.52%	4.53%
Retail plus 50 percent of hours from transportation and warehousing	3.47%	3.78%	2.23%	3.60%
Retail plus 100 percent of hours from transportation and warehousing	3.33%	3.76%	1.98%	2.82%
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Table 2. Annual hours worked trends by period for the retail sector plus three approaches to adding shares of hours from the transportation and warehousing sectors
Industry Group	1990-2000	2000-2007	2007-2019	2019-2022
Retail sector only	1.06%	-0.24%	-0.54%	-0.86%
Retail plus 10 percent of hours from transportation and warehousing	1.11%	-0.23%	-0.46%	-0.57%
Retail plus 50 percent of hours from transportation and warehousing	1.26%	-0.21%	-0.18%	0.32%
Retail plus 100 percent of hours from transportation and warehousing	1.40%	-0.19%	0.07%	1.08%
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Inclusion of couriers and messengers (NAICS 492)

Expanding the definition of retail to include activities of supporting industries that are classified within other NAICS industries requires a closer look at auxiliary establishments. Auxiliaries are defined as establishments of an enterprise or company that exist solely to serve other establishments of the same enterprise. For retail, auxiliary support primarily exists in the transportation and storage of goods, namely the truck transportation, couriers and messengers, or warehousing industries.

BLS first explored creating an expanded retail measure that includes auxiliary data for the couriers and messengers industry (NAICS 492) as part of “last mile” delivery services. Due to limitations in the underlying source data, auxiliaries in the couriers and messengers industry were coupled with the truck transportation and support activities for transportation industries. Using the auxiliary expense data from the U.S. Census Bureau^[4] along with published Input-Output tables from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, we created estimates of an expanded retail measure that includes portions of employment from the couriers and messengers industry.

As indicated in Table 3, using more recent data through 2023, the results of this analysis indicate that inclusion of retail-supporting labor from couriers and messengers will have no meaningful impact on the measurement of retail trade employment. The comparative size of the retail trade industry minimizes that contribution. Internal calculations at BLS put a reasonable estimate at ten percent of the couriers industry in support of retail trade. And even if we make the improbable leap and add all of the hours from this supporting industry to retail, the results are underwhelming.

Table 3. Annual labor productivity trends by period for the retail sector plus two approaches of adding shares of hours from the couriers and messengers industry
Industry	1990-2000	2000-2007	2007-2019	2019-2023
Retail sector only	3.68%	3.81%	2.61%	3.77%
Retail plus 10 percent of hours from couriers and messengers	3.66%	3.82%	2.59%	3.72%
Retail plus 100 percent of hours from couriers and messengers	3.53%	3.86%	2.44%	3.25%
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Notes

^[1] Source: CNSTAT Consensus Panel Study, Recommendation 1: BLS should develop a satellite account for an expanded retail trade sector in collaboration with BEA and the Census Bureau. Such a team could be formed under the Evidence Based Policy Act to facilitate administrative and collaborative efforts. The definition of the broader retail sector for a satellite account could be developed initially by using several definitions that are each simple to implement and that together provide lower and upper bounds for the included activities. A lower-bound definition could include all NAICS codes for retail establishments and for industries that are focused on supporting retail. An upper-bound definition could include all NAICS codes for industries that at least partially support retail. The range between these estimates would then indicate the potential benefit of developing careful approaches for splitting the input and output of industries that only partially support retail.

^[2] The annual percent change is the compound annual growth rate in an index series over a period of more than one year. The change of an index series varies from year to year. However, the annual percent change is the constant rate that can be applied to each year in a period, from the start to the end, that would give the same total result. It is calculated as (Ending Value/Starting Value)^(1/Number of Years)-1.

^[3] Since 2007, hours worked levels in the transportation and warehousing sectors increased 35.1 percent by 2022 while hours worked in retail fell 8.7 percent. For transportation and warehousing, hours worked grew 18.1 percent from 2007 to 2019 and 14.4 percent from 2019 to 2022. In retail, hours worked fell in both the 2007 to 2019 and 2019 to 2022 periods by 6.3 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.

^[4] Auxiliary expense data from the US Census Bureau are unpublished. These data are supplied to BLS through a data sharing agreement limiting the detail BLS is permitted to share.

Last Modified Date: October 9, 2024