Econintersect‘s analysis of final business sales data (retail plus wholesale plus manufacturing) shows unadjusted sales in a tight growth range around 5.0% for the last four months. The rolling averages are unchanged from last month.  This series is moderately noisy, and the real metric is likely the 3 month rolling averages.

  • The unadjusted three month rolling average of business sales growth declined, .
  • This is a record current dollar month for sales.

    • Econintersect Analysis:

  • unadjusted sales rate of growth accelerated 3.6% month-over-month, and up6.1% year-over-year
  • unadjusted sales (inflation adjusted) up 4.9% year-over-year
  • unadjusted sales three month rolling average compared to the rolling average 1 year ago unchanged month-over-month, and is up 4.7% year-over-year.
  • unadjusted business inventories growth decelerated 0.4% month-over-month (up5.2% year-over-year with the three month rolling averages decelerating), and the inventory-to-sales ratio is 1.29 which is average for Septembers during non-recessionary periods.

    • US Census Headlines:

  • seasonally adjusted sales unchanged month-over-month, up 4.1% year-over-year
  • seasonally adjusted inventories up 0.3% month-over-month (up 5.3% year-over-year), inventory-to-sales ratios were up from 1.28 one year ago – and are now 1.30.
  • market expectations were for inventory growth of 0.0% to 0.5% (consensus 0.3%) versus the actual of 0.3%.

    • 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 October 2014. That is early data for the month following the data for this post. This is final data from the Census Bureau for September 2014 for manufacturing, wholesale, and retail:

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