The Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) provides key intercensal measures of manufacturing activity, products, and location for the public and private sectors. The ASM provides the best current measure of current U.S. manufacturing industry outputs, inputs, and operating status, and is the primary basis for updates of the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). Some of the many uses of this data by federal, state, and local governments are measuring productivity, updating producer price indexes, evaluating and forecasting future industrial activity, benchmarking current data on manufacturing shipments and inventories, economic policymaking and forecasting, and preparing annual updates of the GNP and GNP weight deflators.