AI Analysis: Annual wholesale trade survey, financial estimates

Executive Summary

Canada's wholesale trade sector demonstrated strong long-term growth from 2012 to 2024, with total operating revenue nearly doubling from $865 billion to $1.49 trillion — peaking at $1.59 trillion in 2022 — despite a notable COVID-19-related dip in 2020. The dataset, spanning 39,480 records across 38 NAICS industry categories and 14 regions, reveals a highly skewed industry landscape where a small number of large wholesalers dominate revenue and cost figures. Profitability metrics remained remarkably stable throughout the period, with gross margins holding between 15.7% and 17.6% and operating profit consistently between 4.0% and 5.5%.

Key Findings

• Total operating revenue grew approximately 72% over the study period, rising from ~$865 billion in 2012 to ~$1.49 trillion in 2024, with a peak of ~$1.59 trillion in 2022 before a modest pullback.
• The distribution of financial values is strongly right-skewed: the mean value ($7.46M) is roughly 55 times higher than the median ($134,730), indicating that a small number of very large wholesale businesses dominate the dataset.
• Cost of goods sold surged from ~$718 billion in 2012 to ~$1.23 trillion in 2024, closely mirroring revenue growth and confirming that procurement costs scale proportionally with sales volume.
• Gross margin and operating profit remained stable as percentage metrics throughout the 13-year period — averaging 24% and 6% respectively — suggesting consistent pricing dynamics and cost management across the wholesale sector.
• Total labour remuneration grew steadily by ~48%, from approximately $49 million in 2012 to $73 million in 2024, reflecting sustained workforce expansion across Canadian wholesale trade.
• Outlier detection identified 27 records with negative values (the most extreme being -78.3) and flagged year-over-year changes exceeding 20% in specific segments, pointing to corrective entries and periods of unusually rapid structural change.
• Ontario and the national Canada aggregate dominate regional revenue figures, while the dataset's 38 NAICS categories reveal significant disparity between top- and bottom-ranked wholesale sectors by total operating revenue in 2024.