A raw material, also known as a feedstock, unprocessed material, or primary commodity, is a basic material that is used to produce goods, finished products, energy, or intermediate materials that are feedstock for future finished products. Examples of raw materials include: steel, oil, corn, grain, gasoline, lumber, forest resources, plastic, natural gas, coal, and minerals.

Basic Raw Materials (BRM) include sand (including silica sand), clay, hard rock, limestone (including metallurgical limestone) and gravel and other construction and road building materials. These materials are produced relatively cheaply, with the major cost being the transport to the construction site. There are two main types of raw materials: direct and indirect. Direct materials are unprocessed resources that can be specifically traced to an end product. Lumber is a good example of a direct raw material. Language occupies a central role in the production processes of informational capitalism: in call centres, language functions as the raw material, scripts as tools and conversations as a product. Yet the ways in which linguistic production affects key elements of job categories have received little attention.