Businesses engaged in the wholesale trade have an intermediate place in the distribution chain, between producers and consumers of goods. They purchase and resell goods, such as the output of agriculture, mining, or manufacturing, generally without making any substantial changes to the goods. Some of the purchasers of the goods are retailers or other wholesalers. (The term jobbers is sometimes used for wholesalers who specifically serve retailers.) Other purchasers use goods such as industrial machinery or medical instruments to produce goods or provide services. Still other purchasers are processors who transform raw or semi-processed materials into goods of greater commercial value.
Wholesalers operate out of offices or warehouses. The warehouses are temporary storage facilities; unlike a retail store, they are not designed to display merchandise and do not encourage walk-in traffic. Wholesalers do not advertise to the general public. They contact their customers by telephone, sales workers, industry-specific advertising, or electronic media. They tend to create long-term relationships with purchasers, becoming regular suppliers with strong ties.
Wholesalers earn their revenue by charging buyers slightly more than they have paid sellers. Buyers are willing to pay this markup because wholesalers serve as a single point of contact where goods are available from multiple producers. For example, a food market needing eggs, milk, fruit, vegetables, and meat can buy from one wholesaler rather than identifying, negotiating prices, paying, and arranging shipping with the countless different farms that produce these agricultural goods. Wholesalers also relieve purchasers of the burden of warehousing goods that are not needed immediately.
Revenue in the wholesale distribution industry reached $8.2 trillion in 2024, according to the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. More than 6.1 million people were employed in wholesale trade in the U.S. in January 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. About 54 percent of wholesale workers worked in the durable goods sector, and 35 percent were employed in the nondurable goods sector. There is also a third sector, wholesale electronic markets and agents and brokers, that consists of businesses primarily engaged in bringing buyers and sellers together to make deals. About 8 percent of wholesale workers work in this sector. It functions with a smaller workforce than that of durable and nondurable goods wholesalers because it is engaged only in deal-making and therefore does not need workers for warehousing, trucking, and other functions of the two sectors that take possession of goods. Many of these establishments do not even rely primarily on human workers for deal-making, using electronic resources instead.