inventory-to-sales measure

The Census API – Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS) record states its scope as 'providing sales, inventories and inventory-to-sales measures by kind of business', so the measure ships as a peer of the two levels it condenses rather than something you derive yourself. Inside the endpoint's schema the data_type_code field carries the split - 'item type distinguishing measures such as sales, inventories and inventory-to-sales ratios' - while cell_value holds the reported estimate.

Read as months of supply, a ratio of 1.50 means stock equal to one-and-a-half months of sales at the current pace. Coverage is monthly, national (United States only) and per kind of business - the record tags include 'inventories', 'retail-sales' and 'furniture-stores' - with a size estimate of one row per kind of business per month per measure per adjustment flag: dozens of retail categories across multiple measures spanning decades of history, extending further back than the advance MARTS release.

Joinability is the quiet casualty when a derived figure goes missing. Buy a source that lists inventories but not the measure and your team computes the ratio itself - choosing the sales base, the month-end snapshot and the adjustment basis - and now every reconciliation step lands on you instead of the publisher. Two vendors can print different values for the same month while both are arithmetically correct.

For merchandising calls the measure is the signal itself: in the furniture and home-furnishings aisle it tells you whether assortments sit bloated or lean relative to selling pace, which no absolute dollar level reveals on its own.

You rarely have to take a listing's word for it: 82.4% of the 1,744 datasets Datadory catalogs are free to access, and the catalog averages a quality score of 7.81 out of 10, so sample the artifact before committing budget.

Treat every claim of the measure as testable:

1. Confirm the publisher computes the ratio for you. The Census API – MRTS short description promises 'sales, inventories and inventory-to-sales measures by kind of business' - a derived deliverable, not raw levels alone.
2. Pull both levels alongside the ratio. data_type_code separates sales, inventories and ratios in the same endpoint, so retrieving all three keeps any downstream math auditable. 3.

Entries and hubs that share this ground:

• mrts-monthly-retail-trade-series - the full survey series the measure sits inside.
• computer-electronics-retail data - where the same sales-inventory pairing tracks electronics retail.
• home-furnishings data - the aisle where the gauge reads assortment bloat or leanness.