Financial Exchanges & Data Data Provider · Head-to-head
Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES) vs USDA ERS Food Dollar Series
Which financial exchanges & data data provider data fits your job: Annual Integrated Economic Survey – successor to AWTS, or USDA ERS Food Dollar Series. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES) – successor to AWTS
USDA ERS Food Dollar Series
Coverage, side by side
| Annual Integrated Economic Survey – successor to AWTS | USDA ERS Food Dollar Series | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | United States, all 50 states plus District of Columbia, metro areas and other subnational geographies | United States national totals only — no state or sub-state detail |
| Temporal | First integrated vintage: reference year 2023 (predecessor surveys sit in separate records) | Current model 2007–2024; archived prior-methodology series 1993–2023, nominal and constant-2017-dollar real |
| Granularity | Establishment aggregates by NAICS industry, sector through six digits, split by type of operation and tax status, per geography | Annual national values across 47 spending accounts × five series × 13 industry groups × five value types |
What each contains
They tie on 1 attribute. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| Annual Integrated Economic Survey – successor to AWTS | USDA ERS Food Dollar Series | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | U.S. Census Bureau | USDA Economic Research Service |
| Subject lens | Consolidated annual business survey absorbing seven predecessors including the Annual Wholesale Trade Survey: revenues, e-commerce sales, operating expenses, inventories, payroll, employment | Supply-chain decomposition of every domestic food dollar into farm, processing, packaging, transportation, wholesale, retail and other stages |
| Geography | United States, all 50 states plus District of Columbia, metro areas and other subnational geographies | United States national totals only — no state or sub-state detail |
| Temporal reach | First integrated vintage: reference year 2023 (predecessor surveys sit in separate records) | Current model 2007–2024; archived prior-methodology series 1993–2023, nominal and constant-2017-dollar real |
| Granularity | Establishment aggregates by NAICS industry, sector through six digits, split by type of operation and tax status, per geography | Annual national values across 47 spending accounts × five series × 13 industry groups × five value types |
| Scale | 28 published table packages for reference year 2023 | 126,900 rows in the machine-readable nominal file |
| Documented fields | 22 documented fields, verified | 13 documented fields, verified |
| Rubric rating | 9 out of 10 | 9 out of 10 |
| Best for | Who sells what, where, at what scale — the wholesale industry counted | What share of each food dollar each stage captures — the value chain priced |
Or take both in one feed
They stack as structure plus share. Anchor the structure on the Census record — how many wholesaler dollars, how much payroll, how many workers, by NAICS 4244 or 4248, by state and metro. Then read the value chain on the ERS record — what slice of each consumer food dollar the wholesale stage captures, and how that slice splits into wages, property income, taxes and imports.
Join discipline, not luck: align the AIES's NAICS 42 wholesale lines to the Food Dollar's category 8 food wholesale; reconcile the unit systems (thousands of dollars against millions and cents-per-dollar); respect the geography gap — anything subnational comes from the AIES, national-only from the Food Dollar Series; and treat pre-2007 archived Food Dollar years as a separate methodology family rather than splicing them onto the current model.
Worked example: rank metros by grocery-wholesale payroll in the AIES, then use the Food Dollar Series to show what fraction of every consumer dollar that payroll machinery captures nationally. One desk, two dictionaries, no forced choice. Or take both in one feed — delivered together, on the cadence you set.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is the Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES) better than the USDA ERS Food Dollar Series?
Different instruments, tied on quality. The AIES counts the wholesale business itself — revenues, expenses, inventories, payroll and employment by NAICS industry down to six digits across states and metros. Structure favors the AIES; margin economics favor the Food Dollar.
Which dataset covers more geography?
The AIES, decisively. Its cells publish for the United States, all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, metro areas and other subnational geographies, each cut by NAICS industry. The Food Dollar Series holds national totals only — the trade-off for its input-output construction. Anything below the national line in this pairing comes from the Census side.
Which goes further back in time?
The Food Dollar Series: 2007–2024 in the current model, plus archived 1993–2023 nominal and real series under the earlier methodology, flagged as not directly comparable across the break. The AIES offers one integrated vintage, reference year 2023 — its predecessor surveys, AWTS among them, sit in separate records.
Do the two datasets report the same wholesale number?
No, and conflating them distorts models. The AIES reports wholesaler receipts — $1.30 trillion for grocery merchants in 2023 — measured as industry sales. The Food Dollar Series reports the wholesale stage's capture of consumer spending — $137.4 billion, 6.3 cents per food dollar in 2024 — derived from input-output accounts. Sales volume versus value-chain share: different numerators, different denominators.
Which should a food-supply-chain analyst sample first?
Sample both, pick by fit. Start with the AIES for territory sizing, distributor benchmarking and headcount baselines by state or metro. Start with the Food Dollar Series for margin storytelling, farm-share-versus-marketing-share framing and channel comparisons across 47 spending accounts. Either record samples on request.