Econintersect‘s analysis of final business sales data (retail plus wholesale plus manufacturing) for January 2014 shows sales declined with inventory levels up but remaining on the high side of a normal range for periods of expansion.
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- The unadjusted three month rolling average of business sales decelerated after maginally improving last month.
- This is a record current dollar month for sales.
Econintersect Analysis:
- unadjusted sales rate of growth decelerated 2.6% month-over-month, and up the same 2.6% 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 0.5% month-over-month, and is up 3.5% year-over-year.
- unadjusted business inventories growth accelerated 0.5% month-over-month (up3.9% year-over-year), and the inventory-to-sales ratio is 1.40 which is slightly above average for Januarys during non-recessionary periods.
US Census Headlines:
- seasonally adjusted sales down 0.9% month-over-month, up 2.5% year-over-year
- seasonally adjusted inventories up 0.4% month-over-month (up 3.9% year-over-year), inventory-to-sales ratios were up from 1.30 one year ago – and are now 1.32.
- market expected seasonally adjusted inventories to be from 0.2% to 0.4% (consensus 0.4%) versus actual 0.4%.
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 February 2014. That is early data for the month following the data for this post. This is final data from the Census Bureau for January 2014 for manufacturing, wholesale, and retail:
