Econintersect‘s analysis of final business sales data (retail plus wholesale plus manufacturing) shows unadjusted sales declined compared to the previous month. This series is moderately noisy, and the real metric is the 3 month rolling averages – and that metric is decelerating but still average for the last 18 months.
Econintersect Analysis:
Unadjusted Business Sales – Unadjusted (blue line), Unadjusted but Inflation Adjusted (red line), and 3 month rolling Average (yellow line)
US Census Headlines:
The way data is released, differences between the business releases pumped out by the U.S. Census Bureau are not easy to understand with a quick reading. The entire story does not come together until the Business Sales Report (this report) comes out. At this point, a coherent and complete business contribution to the economy can be understood.
Today, Econintersect analyzed advance retail sales for November 2014. This isfinal data from the Census Bureau for October 2014 for manufacturing, wholesale, and retail:
