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Plug-In, Electric Cars

Today’s market size is the number of electric plug-in cars purchased in the United States in 2012. Plug-in electric cars come in two varieties, an all electric version like the Tesla Model S and a hybrid electric and gas engine version such as the Chevy Volt. The electric and gas engine variety is similar to more conventional hybrid cars but has a much larger battery and can, as the name implies, be plugged into an electric outlet for charging. By contrast, most cars referred to simply as hybrids (non-plug-ins) use a battery system to assists the primary gas engine and they charge that battery internally by capturing energy from the operation of the engine itself.

The world of cars is changing, perhaps slowly but it is changing. In 2012, plug-in electrics represented 0.51% of all sales of automobiles in the United States and 11.6% of all hybrid car sales.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2012
Market size: 50,804 plug-in electric cars
Source: JC Reindl, “LG CHEM: Battery Industry’s Future Questioned After Report,” page 1, Detroit Free Press, February 17, 2013.
Posted on February 20, 2013

High School Wrestlers

Our attention was caught last week by the announcement from the International Olympic Committee that it had recommended the elimination of Wrestling from the Olympic Games starting in 2020. Their decision will not be ratified until later this year so one can expect to see wrestling fans around the world gathering their resources to defend the sport and its inclusion in the Olympic Games after the games of 2016. After all, wrestling was one of the original sports in the ancient games, has been in the modern games since they were reestablished in 1896 and wrestling is a recognized sport in 180 countries.

Today’s market size is the number of high school students participating in wrestling in the United States during the academic year, 2010-2011. In that school year, wrestling was the 6th most popular sport for high school males. The source document, linked to below, provides data on high school participation in all major sports programs.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010-2011
Market size: 280,384
Source: “2011-2012 High School Athletics Participation Survey,” August 2012, available online here.
Original source: National Federation of State High School Associations
Posted on February 19, 2013

Aircraft

Upon the news of the merger of American Airlines and U.S. Airways, creating in the process the largest passenger air carrier in the world, our attention is again drawn to the commercial airline industry. It has been a very rocky century so far for this industry.

In late 2011, the parent company of American Airlines, AMR, filed for bankruptcy protection, making American Airlines the last of the big six U.S. airlines to file for bankruptcy protection since the turn of the century (they are listed below). The use of commercial, passenger aircraft as missiles in the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States can be seen as the first of many disruptions to the system, disruptions that included a worldwide financial crisis and a region wide shutdown of air traffic due to the threat posed by volcanic ash. Underlying all of this has been the steady increase in the price of jet fuel which now makes up just over one third of operating expenses for the industry as a whole.

Today’s market size is the number of aircraft being operated by U.S. air carriers. This number does include aircraft used for freight (12.3%) but does not include private jets or the fleets operated by small companies offering nonscheduled, special order flights. The graph shows how the industry fleet size has changed over the past 17 years. A line is also provided on the graph that shows the average, industry wide, passenger load factor each year (PLF). The PLF is a calculation of Revenue Passenger Miles (RPM) divided by Available Seat Miles (ASM).

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2001 and 2011
Market size: 8,497 and 7,185 aircraft respectively
Source: “TABLE 2-6. Number of U.S. Aircraft, Vehicles, and Other Conveyances: 2004-2009,” Transportation Statistics Annual Report-2010, Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) – U.S. Department of Transportation (US DOT), available online here. Data for 2010 and 2011 are from an article by Aaron Karp, “FAA: US Commercial Aircraft Fleet Shrank in 2011,” March 13, 2012, Airports Today, available online here. The data on passenger load factors in the graph are from another report by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, available online here.
Original source: U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Federal Aviation Agency

Largest Bankruptcy Filings in the U.S. Airline Industry since 2000

TWA (2001)
U.S. Airways (2002)
United Airlines (2002)
Delta Air Lines (2006)
Northwest Airlines (2006)
AMR (American Airlines) (2011)

Posted on February 14, 2013

Prostitution

Today we look at what is in most places a black market, prostitution. A recent article in the New York Times about a program designed to help prostitutes in Israel escape from dependence on prostitution provided the market size we post today. It is the estimated value of the prostitution business, annually, in Israel. Interestingly, prostitution is not a criminal offense in Israel, although running a brothel or operating as a pimp are illegal activities.

Geographic reference: Israel
Year: 2011
Market size: $500 million
Source: Isabel Kershner, “Prostitutes in Israel Are Finding New Lives in Training for the Fashion World,” The New York Times, page A9, January 4, 2013.
Posted on February 12, 2013

U.S. Exports

The expansion of international trade over the last two decades has trans- formed the world in many ways and lead to what is commonly referred to as, simply, globalization. Today we look at U.S. exports annually since 1980, divided into all goods exported and all services exported. To see the trend clearly—not that it is subtle—we have prepared a graph that shows U.S. exports of goods and service in two separate lines. They are shown in constant dollars (base year 2000) so that the impact of inflation has been removed and what one sees is the actual rise in exports from the United States.

While services still make up a smaller share of all exports than do goods—30% in 2010, up from 17.5% in 1980—the United States exports more services than it imports. This gives service exports a positive trade balance, something not seen with goods exports since the mid-1970s. The services exported are broken into several large categories as follows, each with its share of total 2012 exports in parenthesis: Travel (20.6%); Passenger Fares (6.4%); Other Transportation (7.0%); Royalties and License Fees (19.5); Other Private Services (among these are financial services and computer services) (45.0%); Transfers under U.S. Military Sales Contracts (2.9%), and Misc. Government Services (0.2%).

Today’s market size is the value of exported goods and exported services from the United States in 2012.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2012
Market size: Goods, $1.564 trillion and Services, $623 billion
Source: “U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, December 2012,” U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, February 8, 2013, available here. the graph was made with data from another Census Bureau report, “U.S. Trade in Goods and Services – Balnce of Payments (BOP) Basis,” June 2012, available as either a PDF or Excel spreadsheet from their web site here.
Original source: Two bureaus in the U.S. Department of Commerce; the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis
Posted on February 8, 2013

Desalination Plants

In a process known as desalination (or desalinization), salt and other minerals are removed from sea water to produce fresh water suitable for human consumption. As world population rises the demand for fresh water rises even more rapidly, since fresh water is used for more than direct human consumption. It is used in agriculture for both crop and livestock production as well as in industrial and mining operations. In particular, a growing quantity of water is being used around the world to extract oil, in both conventional oil well operations and, more notably yet, in hydraulic fracking operations used to extract oil and natural gas from sand tars and shale deposits.

The demand for desalinated water is rising at an estimated rate of 9% per year and is expected to continue to grow at this high rate for some time to come. Desalination plants around the world today produce approximately 65.2 million cubic meters of fresh water per day (24 billion m3 per year), which is equivalent to 0.6% of global water supply.

Today’s market size is an estimate of the money that will be invested to build new desalination plants worldwide between 2010 and 2016. Parts of the Middle East and North Africa are particularly invested in desalination technology, being regions particularly vulnerable to water shortages. In Saudi Arabia, for example, 70% of the total volume of drinking water consumed is supplied through the use of desalination technologies. The Middle East and North Africa are expected to see the largest share of the investments in desalination plants during the period shown here.

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2010–2016
Market size: $88 billion
Source: Water Desalination Using Renewable Energy, Technology Brief 115, pages 3-4, March 2012, available online here. “Saudi Per Capita Water Consumption 91% Higher Than International Average,” Saudi Gazette, September 1, 2012, available here.
Original source: The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA)
Posted on February 5, 2013

Intercountry Adoptions

The decade between 1995 and 2005 was a high point in adoptions by U.S. citizens of children from other countries, as can be seen in the graph. Since then, the numbers of adoptions has plummeted despite growing waiting lists of U.S. citizens interested in adopting. The reasons for the decline are varied but explained this way in a report by Time magazine, “… a combination of forces in the developing world, from reform efforts to economic growth to resurgent nationalism, is turning the attitude against the practice, even in countries where kids may need the most help.”

Today’s market size, we use the term market loosely here, is the number of children adopted by U.S. citizens from abroad in 2004 (the peak year for intercountry adoptions) and 2012. The graph shows the number of children adopted in this way each year from 1991 through 2012 as well as the fertility rate in the United States for each of these years. The fertility rate is the number of children born for every 1,000 women of child baring age, namely 15 to 44 years.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2004 and 2012
Market size: 22,991 and 8,668 respectively
Source: Kayla Webley, “The Baby Deficit,” Time January 21, 2013, page 34. “Statistics – Adoptions by Year,” a report put out by the U.S. State Departments’ Bureau of Consular Affairs and available online here. “International Adoption Facts,” a report published by The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in 2002 and available online here. “National Vital Statistics Reports — Births: Final Data for 2010, August 28, 2012, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), available online here, with updates from another CDC report available here.
Posted on February 1, 2013

Hardware Stores

Today’s market size is the value of sales made through hardware stores in the United States in 2011. Sales were down slightly from 2008 (0.06%) but higher than sales in 2009 and 2010. Hardware stores as measured here do not include large building supply stores such as Home Depot or Lowes. For those familiar with the industrial coding system [North American Industrial Classification System – NAICS] used by the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as the corresponding data gathering agencies in Canada and Mexico, this industry is number 44413.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2011
Market size: $20.13 billion
Source: “Annual Revision of Monthly Retail and Food Services: Sales and Inventories—January 1992 through March 2012,” Monthly & Annual Retail Trade, available online here.
Original source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census
Posted on January 31, 2013

Guns

A tragic mass shooting at the end of 2012 has brought on another round of debates in the United States about whether there should be—and if so what sort—of limits on the private ownership of guns. The United States has the most well armed population in the world, by far. There are an estimated 0.88 firearms per person in the United States. The country with the next greatest number of firearms per capita is Yemen, with 0.55. Guns are big business in the United States.

Today’s market size is the 2011 value of shipments by U.S. small firearms manufacturers, those engaged primarily in making small arms that are carried and fired by individuals [NAICS 33-2994]. Thus, these are not the manufacturers of large, military weaponry but rather the makers of guns sold to individuals.

The U.S. gun manufacturing business has been growing rapidly over the last decade, rising 163% between 2001 and 2011. The graph we present here shows manufacturer shipment data for each year from 1982 through 2011. The red line on the graph shows the apparent consumption of small firearms starting in 2000. Apparent consumption is the wholesale value of manufacturing, less the value of exports, plus the value of imports.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2011
Market size: $3.634 billion [the value of product shipments was $3.246 billion, thus excluding any revenue from other services or leases provided by small firearm manufacturers]
Source: Arsen J. Darnay, Editor, Manufacturing and Distribution USA, “NAICS 332994 – Small Arms Manufacturing,” Gale Group, 2000, page 1984. Joyce P. Simkin, Editor, Manufacturing and Distribution USA, Seventh Edition, “NAICS 332994 – Small Arms Manufacturing,” Gale Cengage Learning, 2013, page 930. Data for 2010 and 2011 are from the most recent Annual Survey of Manufacturers, report published by the U.S. Census Bureau and available online here. Finally, the per capita data cited above come from: Simon Rogers, “Gun Homicides and Gun Ownership Listed by Country,” posted on July 22, 2012, on The Guardian web site here.
Original source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, Interantional Trade Administration (ITA) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
Posted on January 29, 2013

I.R.A. Money

Over the last several decades significant changes have been made to how the majority of people in the United States save for retirement. Getting reliable statistics on the topic, covering several decades, is difficult because of the very structural changes which have occurred in the ways that we save for retirement. The sort of pension plans that use to be regularly offered by large companies—plans in which an employee was promised a defined monthly payout after retirement—are fast disappearing in favor of hybrid plans that offer employees a framework into which they are the primary if not only investors, thus 401(k) and other similar plans. To illustrate the speed of change in this rush away from traditional pension plans, a glimpse at the coverage offered by the largest of firms, those most likely to offer such plans. In 1998, 90% of the companies in the Fortune 100 provided their new employees with a traditional pension. In 2012, that number had fallen to 30%.

In the absense of more traditional pension plans, many people are establishing independent retirement accounts or I.R.A.s to help them save for retirement. Today’s market size is the value of all money invested in an I.R.A. account in the United States as of October 31, 2012. Worth noting is the fact that this balance is higher than the balances of all the other retirement investment categories, such as 401(k) and 403(b) plans (with a balance of $5 trillion) or government employee retirement plans ($4.8 trillion) or the traditional pension plans offered by private sector employers ($2.6 trillion).

In looking at this market, please note that people often roll money into an I.R.A. account from funds in an employer-sponsored retirement plan when terminating employment with that company. These often large sums are part of the market being looked at here. Complicating matters further is the fact that there are oddities in the rules defining how investments are made into I.R.A.s, oddities which allow for more… creative investments in I.R.A.s by some. An extreme example of this came to light last summer, during the presidential campaign, when it was reported that candidate Romney’s I.R.A. account was valued at around $100 million. Since there are limits on how much may be contributed annually to such an account, speculation about the Romney I.R.A. balance ran rampant. But, for our purposes here, it is enough to say that the total balance invested in I.R.A. accounts includes such… anomalies. So, to put this national I.R.A. account balance into perspective, let us add that as of May 2011, 38.8% of all U.S. households had any sort of I.R.A. account. Furthermore, the I.R.A. balance of the median American family that did have an I.R.A. account in 2011 was $42,500.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: October 31, 2012
Market size: $5.3 trillion
Source: Ron Lieber, “Finding Advice for More Modest Retirement Investments,” The New York Times, page B1, January 19, 2013. Emily Brandon, “Top Companies Continue to Drop Pensions,” U.S. News, the Money section, available online here. William D. Cohan, “The Secret Behind Romney’s Magical IRA,” Bloomberg News, July 15, 2012, available online here.
Original source: Investment Company Institute, Towers Watson
Posted on January 24, 2013