EMBARGOED UNTIL: 12:01 A.M. EST, FEBRUARY 10, 2000 (THURSDAY) Public Information Office CB00-24 301-457-3030/301-457-3670 (fax) 301-457-1037 (TDD) e-mail: pio@census.gov Steve Roman 301-457-2786 Nation's Transportation and Warehousing Industries Generate More Than $300 Billion in Revenues, Census Bureau Reports The nation's transportation and warehousing sector reported revenues of $318 billion and employed over 2.9 million workers at more than 178,000 locations in 1997, according to Economic Census reports released today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau. California, with revenues of $37 billion, and Texas, with revenues of $29 billion, led all states. Nationwide, truck transportation generated $141 billion in revenues, dominated by general freight trucking with revenues of $88 billion. Water transportation revenues of $24 billion were attributable mostly to deep-sea freight transportation. The 1997 Economic Census marks the premiere of the new and more flexible North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). NAICS is a new system for classifying individual business locations that replaces the Standard Industrial Classification System that began 60 years ago; it features many more useful business classifications than the previous system. For example, 1997 NAICS-based data show that annual payroll per mixed mode transit employee was nearly $32,000, versus about $16,200 for each scheduled airport shuttle service employee; this detail was not available under the previous system. The new report series consists of 52 -- reports one for each state, the District of Columbia and the United States -- and is titled 1997 Economic Census, Geographic Area Series, Transportation and Warehousing. Released on the Internet, these reports present summary data by industry for the United States, states and metropolitan areas. Data compiled for the transportation and warehousing sector are subject to nonsampling errors. Nonsampling errors can be attributed to many sources: inability to identify all cases in the universe; definition and classification difficulties; differences in the interpretation of questions; errors in recording or coding the data obtained; and other errors of collection, response, coverage, processing and estimation for missing or misreported data.-X-
