Federal obligations in bolt, nut, screw, rivet, and washer manufacturing (NAICS 332722)

A billion dollars spread across 256,416 actions

$1,114,700,925.77 divided by 256,416 awards is about $4,347 per action. That is the opposite of a concentrated finance code. Maintenance depots, shipyards, aviation supply, and facility shops place enormous numbers of small fastener orders. Each delivery order or call can appear as a contract action in USAspending. The $1,114,700,925.77 is still a large obligation total; it is simply built from many small rows rather than a few large ones.

High award counts can include modifications, blanket-purchase calls, and repeated restocks. 256,416 is not a count of unique part numbers or unique factories. It is the number of tagged actions in the extract. Readers who sample the industry table should expect a long tail of small-dollar rows and a thinner head of larger buys.

What fastener manufacturing includes on a federal award

Census NAICS 332722 is manufacturing of bolts, nuts, screws, rivets, and washers. Federal tags follow the vendor’s primary industry. A distributor that is classified as a wholesaler may land in a merchant-wholesale NAICS instead of 332722 even if the SKU is a bolt. A manufacturer of fasteners should land here. The $1,114,700,925.77 is the manufacturing-coded slice, not every nut and bolt the government has ever bought.

Aerospace-grade fasteners, construction fasteners, and industrial fasteners can share this six-digit code. This guide does not split the 256,416 awards by grade or material because those dimensions are not in the packet facts. Award descriptions on the industry hub are the place to inspect a specific NSN or part family.

Why obligation versus outlay still matters on small orders

Even a $4,000 order has an obligation date and a later payment date. Summing 256,416 such rows into $1,114,700,925.77 still produces an obligation total, not a cash total. Cancelled lines and returns can de-obligate. Anyone building a “parts spend” time series should pick one USAspending concept and stay with it.

Assistance awards may not carry NAICS. A grant that funds a workshop’s hardware budget will usually miss 332722. This industry page is the contract catalog view of fastener manufacturing as tagged.

A complete citation of this industry is $1,114,700,925.77 in USAspending contract obligations tagged to NAICS 332722, bolt, nut, screw, rivet, and washer manufacturing, on 256,416 awards. Anything less—dropping the NAICS, dropping the word obligations, or dropping the contract-only universe—overstates what the extract contains. The packet facts do not include a fiscal year, so this guide does not invent one. Live tables on the industry hub can move when USAspending posts modifications; the harvested pair remains $1,114,700,925.77 and 256,416.

How to work with a quarter-million-row industry

Do not try to read 256,416 rows as a narrative. Use the industry hub aggregates: totals, then filters, then sample descriptions. This overlay exists so the hub has a stated source (USAspending.gov), a stated unit (obligations), and a stated count (256,416) next to $1,114,700,925.77. The all-industries list is the hop to related fabricated-metal codes.

Classification errors are expected at the margin. Vendors that straddle fastener wholesalers and structural-steel fabricators may land in 332722 on some actions and in a neighbor on others. Fabricated structural metal (332312) is frames and members, not fasteners. The public-record stance is to keep $1,114,700,925.77 attached to 332722 as tagged, then use aggregates first; 256,416 rows are a catalog, not a narrative. Re-tagging the extract by hand is out of scope for this overlay.

Classification noise at catalog scale

At this volume, some actions will be miscoded. A small error rate still leaves tens of thousands of true fastener rows. The public-record stance is: the tagged total is $1,114,700,925.77 on 256,416 awards. Spot-check outliers on the hub rather than discarding the industry because a catalog code is messy.

Catalog NAICS codes are read as distributions

Award count interprets the buying pattern. 256,416 actions producing $1,114,700,925.77 is a quarter-million small catalog actions, with about $4,347 per action as the simple average. That average hides mix: modifications, options, and delivery orders all increment count. 256,416 is not a count of unique companies and not a count of physical units. Use the hub amount sort to see whether a few large rows plus a long tail make up most of the tagged total.

Outlays remain a separate USAspending concept. An agency can obligate $1,114,700,925.77 across 256,416 tagged bolt, nut, screw, rivet, and washer manufacturing actions and pay on a different calendar. De-obligations after cancellations reduce the obligation ledger; they do not rewrite the fact that this NAICS has been a large tagged category in the harvest. Assistance without NAICS still sits outside even when the real-world activity looks similar. Program pages answer the grant question; this page answers the tagged-contract question.

Internal links on this file point only to the bolt, nut, screw, rivet, and washer manufacturing industry page and the all-industries directory. Those are the packet hrefs. Neighboring industry codes mentioned in prose are classification context only. Source note, copied from the packet: NAICS from USAspending contract awards. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS. The overlay’s job is to state $1,114,700,925.77, 256,416, the obligation unit, and the boundary around fastener wholesalers and structural-steel fabricators.

Questions

How much does the federal government obligate on fastener manufacturing?

NAICS 332722 shows $1,114,700,925.77 in contract obligations on 256,416 USAspending awards. That is a high-volume catalog pattern. The figure is obligations, not outlays, and not a count of individual bolts. Quote it as USAspending contract obligations tagged to NAICS 332722, not as cash outlays. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS, so grants remain outside the 256,416-award extract behind $1,114,700,925.77.

Why are there more than 250,000 awards for about $1.11 billion?

Fasteners are bought as many small supply actions. 256,416 awards against $1,114,700,925.77 averages about $4,347. Calls against blanket vehicles and restock orders add rows. The industry hub shows the size distribution. Fabricated structural metal (332312) is frames and members, not fasteners. Keep $1,114,700,925.77 attached to 332722 as tagged on 256,416 actions; do not merge neighbor codes into the same unlabeled cell.

Does 332722 include fastener wholesalers?

Not by design. 332722 is manufacturing. Merchant wholesalers use other NAICS. Some dual-role vendors may be tagged either way. This page’s $1,114,700,925.77 follows the 332722 tag on 256,416 contract actions. That pattern is a quarter-million small catalog actions, with about $4,347 per action as the simple average of $1,114,700,925.77 over 256,416 awards. Use aggregates first; 256,416 rows are a catalog, not a narrative.

Are grant-funded hardware purchases in this total?

Usually no. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS, so they sit outside this contract extract. Use program pages for grants and the fastener industry page for tagged manufacturing contracts. This industry guide covers tagged contracts only: $1,114,700,925.77 obligated on 256,416 bolt, nut, screw, rivet, and washer manufacturing awards in USAspending. Outlays are a different field; assistance without NAICS is a different award type.