Business Inventories, or Manufacturing and Trade Sales and Inventories, show a 1.1% increase in sales and an 0.8% increase in inventories for December. Earlier, wholesale inventories, about a third of all inventories, reported earlier, also showed a 1.0% increase for December.

Below is the monthly percent change for business inventories.

Inventories and sales are not adjusted for inflation. Inventories were a -3.70 percentage point contribution to Q4 GDP. They were annualized, quarterly. This report is only part of the total inventories in the U.S.

The change for Q4 business inventories was $101.9 billion yet Q3 was $102.6 billion, seasonally adjusted, nominal, not annualized. From the Q4 GDP report we see a nominal value for inventories of $5.3 billion, annualized. Not annualized we have a nominal change of -$0.7 billion for total business inventories. So odds on for the Q4 GDP revisions, inventories will not be increasing in their change contribution significantly, but probably a slight decrease. In other words, instead of a -3.7 percentage point contribution to Q4 GDP, it will probably be more like -3.8.

On the other hand, wholesale inventories changes in Q4 were $40.5 billion, whereas for Q4 wholesale inventory changes were $47.2 billion. Wholesale inventories are included in total business inventories.

This report includes:

The data that is used as input for the Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales (MTIS) economic indicator release is collected by three separate surveys: the Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories and Orders Survey (M3), the Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS), and the Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS).

This Census economic report covers Retail, Manufacturing and Wholesale inventories, which is pretty much most of the non-farm inventories the BEA uses for their change in private inventory calculations in the GDP report and national accounts.

Here is last month's report overview, unrevised.