WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) – U.S. business inventories increased slightly more than expected in September, suggesting inventories probably added to economic \u200bgrowth in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Inventories rose 0.2% after being unchanged \u200cin August, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said. Inventories are a key component of \u200cgross domestic product and one of the most volatile. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast inventories rising 0.1%. They increased 1.2% year-on-year in September.<\/p>\n
The report was delayed by the recently ended 43-day shutdown of the \u2060government.<\/p>\n
Retail inventories increased 0.4% in \u200cSeptember after being unchanged in August. Motor vehicle inventories jumped 1.2% after gaining 0.1% in August. Retail inventories \u200dexcluding autos, which go into the calculation of GDP, were flat for a second straight month.<\/p>\n
Wholesale inventories rose 0.5% in September while stocks at manufacturers \u200bfell 0.1%.<\/p>\n
Business inventories decreased at a $18.3 billion annualized rate in the \u200csecond quarter, subtracting 3.44 percentage points from GDP. That was, however, more than offset by a record 4.83 percentage point contribution from a smaller trade deficit.<\/p>\n
The Atlanta Federal Reserve is forecasting gross domestic product increased at a 3.6% annualized rate in the third quarter. The government \u2060will release its first estimate of third-quarter \u200bGDP on December 23 after it was \u200bdelayed by the shutdown. The economy grew at a 3.8% pace in the April-June quarter. While the rebound in \u200dinventories likely added \u2060to GDP growth last quarter, it also reflected softening demand.<\/p>\n
Business sales were unchanged in September for the second consecutive month. Sales \u2060at retailers ticked up 0.1%. At September’s sales pace, it would take 1.37 \u200cmonths for businesses to clear shelves, unchanged from August.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200cLucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) – U.S. business inventories increased slightly more than expected in September, suggesting inventories probably…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":451632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,79,31648,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-451631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-gross-domestic-product","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115731132776673913","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}