The Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey covers companies with employment that are primarily engaged in merchant wholesale trade in the US. These include merchant wholesalers that take title of the goods they sell, and jobbers, industrial distributors, exporters, and importers. Excluded are non-merchant wholesalers such as manufacturer sales branches and offices; agents, merchandise or commodity brokers, and commission merchants; and other businesses whose primary activity is other than wholesale trade. The Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey provides data on dollar values of merchant wholesale sales, end-of- month inventories, and methods of inventory valuation. The method used is a mail-out/mail-back survey of about 7,100 selected wholesale firms. The sample of merchant wholesalers is drawn from the Standard Statistical Establishment List, which contains all Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) and locations of establishments for listed businesses.