Monthly Mineral Industry Surveys Silver Data: Dataset Structure and Field Coverage

Mineral Industry Surveys (MIS) are the monthly statistical reports the USGS National Minerals Information Center publishes for silver, indexed on the USGS Silver Statistics and Information (hub) page. Each issue arrives as a pair: an approximately 150 KB PDF for reading and a 100 KB XLSX workbook carrying six tables for calculation. The hub lists them month by month for 2024 and 2025, next to a quarterly U.S. Production of Selected Mineral Commodities report.

Every silver MIS XLSX holds the same six-table skeleton, which is what makes the series stackable month over month:

Because Table 1 is state-split and Tables 3-6 are partner-country-split, one year of issues yields a US production panel, a trade matrix and a domestic price series from a single publisher.

The monthly series on the page starts at 2024, but the same hub reaches much deeper through its annual series: Mineral Commodity Summaries silver chapters as PDF from 1996 through 2025, Minerals Yearbook silver chapters from 1994 through 2021 with tables-only XLS/XLSX releases for 2002-2023, and Data Series 140 historical statistics running back to colonial times. Special publications round it out - Data Series 139 on international mineral exploration, SIR 2013-5178 on the lifecycle of silver in the United States in 2009, SIR 2012-5188 on metal prices through 2010, Open-File Report 2004-1251's silver commodity profile, and C1196-N on silver recycling in 2000.

For world context the companion USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 - Silver chapter carries a two-column world mine production table for 2023 and 2024e across 14 named producers: Mexico moving from 6,290 to 6,300 metric tons, China from 3,400 to 3,300, Peru from 3,200 to 3,100, and the United States from 1,020 to 1,100. The monthly MIS issues then fill in the US leg between those annual markers.

The monthly surveys answer "what did the United States do last month"; the annual sources answer "what happened globally last year." Used together they bracket each other:

• Scale. US mine production reached roughly 1,100 tons in 2024, valued at about $960 million, produced at 4 silver mines plus byproduct recovery at 31 base- and precious-metal operations across 12 states, with Alaska and Idaho the leading states. Globally, the Silver Institute reports 819.7 million ounces of 2024 mine production, up 0.9 percent - so the US accounts for a small share of world output, which is why the monthly series is US-only.
• Balance context. The same Silver Institute page puts 2024 recycling at 193.9 million ounces (up 6 percent, a twelve-year high) and total demand at 1.16 billion ounces (down 3 percent), led by Mexico, China, Peru, Bolivia and Chile in production rankings.
• Price spine. The World Bank Commodity Markets (Pink Sheet) carries monthly silver averages back to January 1960 in one 578 KB XLSX, in nominal and constant-2010 real dollars - the longest series against which to sanity-check an Engelhard-based MIS price column.

A practical pattern: aggregate twelve MIS Table 1 months and reconcile against the annual US figure before trusting either, then extend the frame outward with the annual global tables.

The silver data guide is the industry pillar post - all 12 pooled silver datasets scored and grouped by workflow, with the government statistics family this page drills into placed alongside price, fund and trade-association alternatives.