October 2014 Business Inventories And Sales Growth Slows

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 sales rate of growth decelerated 2.8% month-over-month, and up3.5% year-over-year
  • unadjusted sales (inflation adjusted) up 1.8% year-over-year
  • unadjusted sales three month rolling average compared to the rolling average 1 year ago decelerated 0.7% month-over-month, and is up 4.0% year-over-year.
  • Unadjusted Business Sales – Unadjusted (blue line), Unadjusted but Inflation Adjusted (red line), and 3 month rolling Average (yellow line)

  • unadjusted business inventories growth decelerated 0.5% month-over-month (up4.7% year-over-year with the three month rolling averages decelerating), and the inventory-to-sales ratio is 1.29 which is slightly above average for Octobers during non-recessionary periods.
  • US Census Headlines:

  • seasonally adjusted sales down 0.1%month-over-month, up 3.4% year-over-year
  • seasonally adjusted inventories up 0.2% month-over-month (up 4.8% year-over-year), inventory-to-sales ratios were up from 1.29 one year ago – and are now 1.30.
  • market expectations were for inventory growth of -0.1% to +0.5% (consensus 0.3%) versus the actual of +0.2%.
  • The way data is released, differences between the business releases pumped out by the 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:

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