Supply Chain Explorer
Select a sector to see where it sources its inputs and where its output goes — drawn from the BEA Input-Output Use Table.
Pick a sector to explore:
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Use of Commodities by Industries, After Redefinitions (Producers’ Prices) — Summary, 2024 .
What am I looking at?
Each chart shows one sector in the middle. The blue bars on the left are its biggest suppliers — the industries that sell the most inputs (raw materials, parts, services) to it. The green bars on the top-right are its biggest customers — other industries that buy what it produces. The orange bars on the bottom-right are final demand categories: what households consume, what businesses invest, what the government buys, and what gets exported. The width of each ribbon is proportional to the share of spending or output it represents.
What do the percentages mean?
On the left side, each percentage is that supplier's share of the selected sector's total intermediate input bill — so if Petroleum & Coal Products shows 18%, that sector spends 18 cents of every dollar of inputs on petroleum. On the right side, percentages show each destination's share of the sector's total commodity output (minus imports), so all right-side shares add up to 100%.
What is "intermediate demand" versus "final demand"?
Intermediate demand is output sold to other businesses as an input into their own production — steel going into an auto plant, for example. Final demand is output that reaches the end of the economic chain: it's consumed by households, invested in equipment or buildings, spent by government, or shipped overseas as exports. The split between the two tells you whether a sector mostly feeds other industries or mostly sells to end-users. See the BEA's primer on Input-Output accounting for a deeper explanation.
Isn't treating "industries" and "commodities" the same thing a simplification?
Yes — and it's worth understanding. The BEA's Use Table tracks the flow of commodities (types of goods and services) across industries (collections of businesses). In practice, most industries produce mostly one commodity, but some produce several. The BEA applies a "redefinitions" adjustment to move secondary products to the industry that primarily makes them, which brings commodities and industries closer to a one-to-one match. Even so, treating the two as identical — as this chart does — is a recognized simplification. The BEA explains the distinction in detail in its Input-Output Concepts and Methods guide.
Why do some sectors show only a few connections?
To keep the chart readable, flows smaller than $500 million are excluded, and only the top 10 suppliers and top 10 buyers are shown individually — everything else is bundled into "All Other Inputs" or "Other Intermediate Demand." Small or highly specialized sectors (like Pipeline Transportation or Funds & Trusts) may have just a handful of flows above that threshold. The full 71×71 matrix is available from the BEA interactive data portal.
Does this show how much money changes hands?
Not directly. Both sides are normalized to 100% so the chart compares relative shares, not dollar volumes. This lets you compare the supply-chain structure of a giant sector like Finance with a small one like Wood Products on the same visual scale. Dollar values for every flow are in the underlying BEA Use Table (millions of dollars, 2024 data) linked in the source note above.