The Markup Chain: Where a Dollar of Goods Goes, Factory to Shelf
Summary
Americans spent $6.49 trillion on goods in 2025 (Bureau of Economic Analysis). This Sky survey follows one dollar of it back up the chain: 47.5 cents was the producer's price — mostly what a factory, farm, or mine charged, with imports counted at their landed value at a U.S. port — and 52.5 cents was added on the way to the buyer: in rounded cents, 2.3 for for-hire freight, 12.3 for wholesalers, and 38.0 for retailers, with sales taxes counted inside the margins.
One dollar, four hands
In the Bureau of Economic Analysis's 2025 bridge table⧉, 47.5 cents of each goods dollar was the producer's price: mostly what the factory, farm, or mine charged, with imports counted at their landed value at a U.S. port⧉, duties included. For-hire freight took 2.3 cents, wholesalers 12.3, and retailers 38.0. That 2.3 cents counts only freight bought from for-hire carriers⧉: a company hauling goods in its own trucks carries that cost inside the producer's price or the trade margins, and shipping imports to a U.S. port is counted in their landed value. The table splits consumer spending, category by category, into that producer's price and the transport and trade margins⧉ needed to move goods to the buyer.
View data as table
| Producer's price (factory, farm, mine, or landed import) | 47.5¢ | $3.08 trillion |
|---|---|---|
| For-hire freight (billed by carriers) | 2.3¢ | $0.15 trillion |
| Wholesaler's margin | 12.3¢ | $0.80 trillion |
| Retailer's margin (sales taxes included) | 38.0¢ | $2.46 trillion |
A margin is not a profit
A trade margin is sales minus the cost of the goods sold⧉, and counts the sales tax a store rings up⧉ inside it. Out of those 38 cents come the sales tax the store passes to the government, its staff, its rent, and its power bill; profit, if any, is what remains.
Retail's value added⧉ is figured on its whole output — $2.95 trillion in 2025⧉, more than its $2.46 trillion margin on consumer goods — minus rent, utilities, and other purchased inputs. It came to $1.81 trillion, 5.9 percent of . Employees received 47.2 percent of it; taxes on production and imports⧉ less subsidies, a category that includes sales taxes, took 19.3 percent; and gross operating surplus⧉, the pool that holds profits and the wear on stores and equipment, was 33.4 percent.
The cut depends on the shelf
On women's and girls' clothing⧉, the retailer's margin was 55.8 cents of each dollar; on furniture and furnishings, 41.4; on household appliances, 26.0, where the producer's price was 48.8 cents. The retailer's share swings with what is on the shelf.
View data as table
| Women's and girls' clothing | 55.8¢ | $142.1 billion of $254.8 billion |
|---|---|---|
| Furniture and furnishings | 41.4¢ | $120.9 billion of $291.7 billion |
| All consumer goods | 38.0¢ | $2.46 trillion of $6.49 trillion |
| Household appliances | 26.0¢ | $23.2 billion of $89.3 billion |
- Just over half a goods dollar is added on the way to the buyer. Of $6.49 trillion Americans spent on goods in 2025, 47.5 cents per dollar was the producer's price — mostly manufactured, farm, or mined goods, with imports at their landed value at a U.S. port — and 52.5 cents went to for-hire freight (2.3), wholesalers (12.3), and retailers (38.0). All are rounded, so the three parts add to 52.6.
- A margin is not a profit. The retail margin is sales minus the cost of the goods, with sales tax counted inside; the tax, staff, rent, and power come out of it before any profit. Retail trade's $1.81 trillion of value added in 2025, figured on all its output rather than consumer goods alone, split 47.2 percent to employees, 19.3 percent to taxes on production and imports less subsidies, and 33.4 percent to gross operating surplus.
- The cut depends on the shelf. Retailers took 55.8 cents of each dollar spent on women's and girls' clothing, 41.4 on furniture and furnishings, and 26.0 on household appliances, against 38.0 across all goods.
Where this sits: This is one slice of Sky: Industries — a survey, industry by industry, of how the money moves. Retail's slice is the markup chain on a dollar of goods. The next slice is finance and banking: how a deposit becomes a loan becomes a security. The split is 's 2025 bridge table, covering goods only; services carry almost no trade margin there. The cents are estimates, not measured sale by sale: a staff-written input-output handbook (2006, updated 2009), describing 1997-benchmark methods, noted that margin estimates rested on limited source data and broad assumptions⧉. Read them as the chain's shape, not any single receipt. Job counts are preliminary estimates.
Sources(7) ▾
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, PCE Bridge Table, Summary Level, 1997–2025 (sheet "2025" and "Data Layout") (2026-09-04) — 's personal consumption expenditures () bridge table, read in full with openpyxl (workbook last modified September 4, 2026). For every category in NIPA Table 2.4.5 it splits what households paid (purchasers' value) into the commodity's producers' value, transportation costs, the wholesale trade margin, and the retail trade margin, in millions of dollars. Summing the 2025 sheet over the goods categories (NIPA lines 5 through 46) gives purchasers' value $6,489,214 million: producers' value $3,082,648 million, transportation $146,095 million, wholesale margin $796,859 million, retail margin $2,463,613 million. The 'Data Layout' sheet states that both trade margins include sales taxes and excise taxes collected by the wholesaler or retailer, and describes the 'Transportation Costs' column as the total transportation delivery cost; 's input-output handbook (p. 8–16) defines those costs as for-hire services only, so the article calls that column for-hire freight. Category rows used: women's and girls' clothing (line 32), furniture and furnishings (line 9), household appliances (line 10). The four columns are estimates distributed from Census trade and freight data, not measured sale by sale. apps.bea.gov · original document
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP by Industry: Value Added by Industry (Tables TVA105, TVA110, TVA112, TVA113), annual data 1997–2025 (2026-09-30) — 's value-added-by-industry workbook, 'Data published September 30, 2026' (the 2026 annual update), read in full with openpyxl. TVA105-A gives 2025 nominal value added: $30,861,292 million (line 1) and retail trade $1,810,361 million (line 35). TVA110-A gives retail trade at 5.9 percent of in 2025. TVA113-A splits retail trade's 2025 value added into compensation of employees $855,057 million (line 138), taxes on production and imports less subsidies $350,219 million (line 139), and gross operating surplus $605,084 million (line 140); TVA112-A gives the same as 47.2, 19.3, and 33.4 percent of value added. apps.bea.gov · original document
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP by Industry: Gross Output by Industry (Table TGO105), annual data 1997–2025 (2026-09-30) — 's gross-output-by-industry workbook, 'Data published September 30, 2026' (the same annual update as the value-added workbook), read in full with openpyxl. TGO105-A line 35 gives retail trade's 2025 gross output as $2,945,174 million. For a trade industry, output is measured as its margin on everything it resells (handbook p. 5–4), so this is the base retail value added is figured on: larger than the $2,463,613 million retail margin on consumer goods in the bridge table. Used only to show that retail's value added is not carved out of the consumer-goods margin alone. apps.bea.gov · original document
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics, Employment and Earnings Table B-1a: Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail, seasonally adjusted (2026-10-02) — Current Employment Statistics, Employment and Earnings Table B-1a (last modified October 2, 2026), seasonally adjusted only, in thousands; columns Sept. 2025, May–Aug. 2026, and Sept. 2026(p). This is not The Employment Situation's Table B-1 (a separate page with not-seasonally-adjusted and seasonally-adjusted groups), though the seasonally adjusted values match. Retail trade employed 15,479.9 thousand in September 2026 (preliminary), out of 159,044 thousand total nonfarm payroll jobs. The live page blocks scripted access, so it was read through the tool fetch and the Wayback capture of October 11, 2026, which shows the same values. bls.gov · original document
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Concepts and Methods of the U.S. Input-Output Accounts (September 2006, updated April 2009) (2009-04-01) — 's input-output handbook, linked from bea.gov's methodology page, read via pdftotext -layout. It defines the margin that trade industries produce (Glossary, p. Glossary–19: sales receipts less the cost of goods sold, plus sales and excise taxes collected by the trade establishment); explains that imported goods enter the accounts at domestic port value, the foreign port value plus customs duties, freight, and insurance (Chapter 7, p. 7–8); describes the bridge tables as showing producers' value plus the transport costs and trade margins, including sales taxes, needed to move a good from producer to consumer (Chapter 12, p. 12–3); notes that margin estimates rest on limited source data and broad assumptions (Chapter 8, p. 8–15); and states that transportation costs include only for-hire services, not company-owned trucks (Chapter 8, p. 8–16), which is why the article calls the bridge's transport step for-hire freight. The handbook's methods are based on the 1997 benchmark; the definitions cited remain those of the current bridge table. bea.gov · original document
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Glossary: Taxes on production and imports (2018-04-13) — 's official definition of 'taxes on production and imports', the value-added component that includes state and local sales taxes. Used to say what the 19.3 percent slice of retail value added contains; that slice is published net, as 'taxes on production and imports less subsidies' (TVA112-A/TVA113-A line 139), and the article labels it so. bea.gov · original document
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Glossary: Gross operating surplus (2018-04-13) — 's official definition of gross operating surplus: the residual of an industry's output after intermediate inputs, compensation of employees, and taxes on production and imports less subsidies, including consumption of fixed capital, proprietors' income, and corporate profits. Used to say what the 33.4 percent slice of retail value added is, and that purchased inputs such as rent come out before value added is counted. bea.gov · original document
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Americans spent $6.49 trillion on goods in 2025⧉ — cars and clothes, groceries and phones, medicine and furniture. The last link of the chain is a big employer: retail trade had about 15.5 million payroll jobs⧉ in September 2026, nearly one in ten U.S. payroll jobs. This slice follows one of those goods dollars backward, from the register to the factory gate, and counts who keeps each cent.