    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 2, 2000]
    [Page 360]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Statement on the First Estimate of E-Commerce Retail Sales
    March 2, 2000

        Today the Commerce Department released the first-ever official
    estimate of retail E-commerce sales--or ``E-tail'' sales. This is a
    historical landmark that symbolizes and helps measure our transition to
    a new information economy. We first started keeping track of retail
    sales on a monthly basis in 1951. The announcement that E-tail sales
    over the Internet and other electronic networks reached $5.3 billion in
    the fourth quarter of 1999 is an important step to ensure that we have
    accurate and timely information about the economy in the 21st century.
        This is only the latest evidence of the dramatic contribution that
    the Internet, information technology, and E-commerce have made to what
    is now the longest economic expansion in history. When I became
    President in 1993, there were 50 sites on the World Wide Web. Today,
    there are more than 10 million. The information technology industry now
    accounts for fully one-third of our economic growth, and the jobs it
    creates pay almost 80 percent more than the private sector average.
    Using the Internet, families can obtain lower prices and better choices
    for everything from groceries to home mortgages to automobiles. Our goal
    must be to continue to support the basic research that has allowed the
    Internet to flourish, to enable every American to enjoy the benefits and
    opportunities of the new economy, and to ensure that the privacy of
    individuals is protected in the information age.