Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
4th qtr GDP; December income and outlays & January income; December’s home construction, factory inventories and wholesale sales, et al
The key economic releases of the past week were the 1st estimate of 4th quarter GDP and the December report on Personal Income and Spending, both from the Bureau of Economic Analysis; which were originally scheduled for January 30th and 31st respectively. Since January personal income data was also available, the BEA also included Personal Income for January concurrently with the full December report on Income and Outlays.
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Other major reports released this week included the December report on New Residential Construction, from the Census Bureau, which was originally scheduled for January 17th, the Wholesale Trade, Sales and Inventories report for December, originally scheduled for release on February 8th, and the Full Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for December, originally scheduled for February 6th…in addition, in advance of the GDP report, the Census also released the Advance report on December Retail Inventories and Wholesale Inventories, and the Advance report on US International Trade in Goods for December…
Regular monthly reports which were published on schedule this week included the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) for January, a weighted composite index of 85 different economic metrics, which fell to – 0.43 in January from a revised +0.05 in December, which was reported at +0.27 a month ago…that left the 3 month average of the index near 0.0 in January, down from a revised +0.16 in December, which indicates that national economic activity was right at the historical average over that three month period…the week also saw the Case-Shiller Home Price Index for December from S&P Case-Shiller, which reported that home prices nationally during October, November and December averaged 4.7% higher than prices for the same homes that sold during the same 3 month period a year earlier…since last month’s Case-Shiller report indicated that home prices for September, October and November averaged 5.2% higher than September, October and November of 2017, this month’s drop means that the implied but unpublished one month year over year index has fallen 1.5% between September and December…
In addition, the week also saw the widely followed purchasing manager’s survey from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM): the February Manufacturing Report On Business indicated that the manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) fell to 54.2% in February, down from 56.6% in January, which means that a smaller plurality of purchasing manager executives reported expansion in various facets of their business in February than did in January…
This week also saw the release of the last three regional Fed manufacturing surveys for February: the Dallas Fed Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey reported their general business activity composite index rose to +13.1 from last month’s +1.0, suggesting a pickup in Texas manufacturing; the Richmond Fed Survey of Manufacturing Activity, covering an area that includes Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, the District of Columbia and West Virginia, reported its broadest composite index rose to +16 in February, up -2 in January, suggesting a return to moderate expansion for that region’s manufacturing, and the Kansas City Fed manufacturing survey for February, covering western Missouri, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming and northern New Mexico, which reported its broadest composite index fell to +1 in January, down from +5 in January and +6 in December, a reading that indicates near stagnation of that region’s manufacturing.
See also:
- S and P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20 City Home Price Index December 2018 Year-over-Year Growth Unchanged
- January 2019 CFNAI Super Index Moving Average Slows Confirming A Slowing Economy?
- February 2019 Texas Manufacturing Survey Slightly Declines
- February 2019 Richmond Fed Manufacturing Survey Significantly Improves
- February 2019 Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Again Declined And Is Barely Positive
4th Quarter GDP Grew at 2.6% Rate; 2018 Growth was Strongest Since 2005
Note: the release of the first, or so-called Advance Estimate of 4th quarter GDP, was originally scheduled for January 30th, but was not published on time because most of the data for December was unavailable due to the government shutdown…this estimate was published on Thursday, the date originally scheduled for the 2nd GDP estimate, and is being called an “initial estimate” in lieu of the missing advance report…to facilitate this report, the Census published their advance estimates of wholesale and retail inventories and December trade earlier this week, as well as an accelerated report on factory inventories…accordingly, the reliability of this report should be considered akin to that of an advance estimate…
That said, the BEA reported our economy grew at a 2.6% rate in the 4th quarter, somewhat slower than the growth rate of the third quarter, as weaker personal consumption and much slower growth in private inventories were only partially offset by greater fixed investment growth…the Initial Estimate of 4th Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated that the real output of goods and services produced in the US grew at a 2.6% annual rate over the output of the 3rd quarter of 2018, when our real output grew at a 3.4% real rate, as inventory investment and government contributed little to 4th quarter growth as compared to the 3rd quarter…for the entire year, our economy grew at a 2.9% rate, up from the the 2.2% growth of 2017, and the 1.5% growth rate of 2016, and the strongest GDP growth rate since 2005….in current dollars, our fourth quarter GDP grew at a 4.6% annual rate, increasing from what would work out to be a $20,658.2 billion a year output rate in the 3rd quarter to a $20,891.4 billion annual rate in the 4th quarter, with the headline 2.6% annualized rate of increase in real output arrived at after an annualized inflation adjustment averaging 1.8%, aka the GDP deflator, was applied to the current dollar change…
As we would expect with an initial estimate, the BEA cautions that the source data is incomplete and also subject to revisions, which have averaged +/-0.7% in either direction for nominal GDP, and +/- 0.6% for real (inflation adjusted) GDP before the final estimate for the quarter is released, which will be at the end of March…also note that December construction has yet to be reported, and that the BEA assumed a small decrease in nonresidential construction, a modest increase in residential construction, and a small increase in state and local construction in December before they estimated 4th quarter output (see their Key source data and assumptions Excel file for more details)..
As we cover the details on the 4th quarter below, remember that the press release for GDP reports all quarter over quarter percentage changes at an annual rate, which means that they’re expressed as a change a bit over 4 times of that what actually occurred over the 3 month period, and that the prefix “real” means that each change has been adjusted for inflation using indexes chained from 2012 prices, and then that all percentage changes in this report are calculated from those ‘2012 dollar’ figures, which would be better thought of as being quantity indexes than as any reality based dollar amounts…for our purposes, all the data that we’ll use in reporting the changes here comes directly from the pdf for the initial estimate of 4th quarter GDP, which is linked to on the BEA GDP landing page, where you can also find links to just the tables on Excel and other technical notes about this release…specifically, we refer to table 1, which shows the real percentage change in each of the GDP components annually and quarterly since the 4th quarter of 2014, table 2, which shows the contribution of each of the components to the GDP growth figures for those quarters and years, table 3, which shows both the current dollar value and the inflation adjusted value in 2012 dollars of each of those components, and table 4, which shows the change in the price indexes for each of the GDP components..
Personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which accounts for around 69% of GDP, grew at a 4.34% rate in current dollars in the 4th quarter, which was deflated to indicate a 2.8% real growth rate of goods and services consumed for GDP purposes, after an annualized PCE price index increase of 1.5% was used to adjust that consumer spending for inflation…consumer outlays for durable goods rose at a 4.35% rate in current dollars while prices for those durable goods fell at a 1.5% rate, and thus the BEA found real growth in the output of consumer durables indicated by that spending rose at a 5.9% rate, as real consumption of motor vehicles and parts grew at a 9.2% rate and accounted for almost half the growth in durables…the BEA also found that real output of consumer non-durable goods grew at a 2.8% rate, after growth in consumer spending for non-durables at a 1.8% rate was adjusted for weighted non-durable goods prices that fell at a 1.0% rate, as modest growth in real consumption of food, clothing, energy and other non-durable goods all contributed….meanwhile, the 5.1% nominal growth in consumer outlays for services was deflated by a 2.7% average increase in prices for personal services to show real output of consumer services grew at a 2.4% annual rate, as a 3.3% growth rate in real health care services accounted for more than one-third of services growth…as a result of those changes in growth from the 3rd to the 4th quarter, the increase in real outlays for durable goods added 0.41 percentage points to the GDP growth rate, increased non-durable goods added 0.39 percentage points, and increased services added 1.11 percentage points to the growth rate of the economy in the 4th quarter..
The change in other components of the change in GDP is computed by the BEA in the same manner that we have just illustrated for computing real PCE; ie, the actual annualized increase in current dollar spending for the quarter is adjusted with an annualized inflation factor for that component, yielding the change in real units of goods or services produced in the quarter at an annual rate….thus, real gross private domestic investment, which had grown at a real 15.2% annual rate in the 3rd quarter, grew at a real 4.6% annual rate from those levels in the 4th quarter…however, the real growth rate of fixed investments increased, growing at a 3.9% annual rate in the 4th quarter, after growing at a 1.1% rate in the 3rd quarter…among fixed investments, real non-residential fixed investment grew at a 6.2% rate even though real investment in non-residential structures shrunk at a 4.2% rate and subtracted 0.13 percentage points from 4th quarter GDP, because real investment in equipment grew at a 6.7% rate and added 0.39 percentage points to 4th quarter GDP and real investment in intellectual property grew at 13.1% rate and added 0.56 percentage points to GDP…at the same time, real residential investment shrunk at a 4.2% rate and subtracted 0.14 percentage points from GDP….for an easy to read table as to what’s included in each of those GDP investment categories, see Table 6.1 in the NIPA Handbook, Chapter 6, page 3…
Meanwhile, real private inventories grew by an inflation adjusted $97.1 billion in the 4th quarter, after growing at an inflation adjusted $89.8 billion in the 3rd quarter, and as a result the $7.3 billion positive change in real inventory growth added 0.13 percentage points to the 4th quarter’s growth rate, after $126.6 billion in real inventory growth in the 3rd quarter had added 2.33 percentage points to that quarter’s GDP….however, since growth in inventories indicates that more of the goods produced during the quarter were left in storage or “sitting on the shelf”, their increase by $7.3 billion in turn means real final sales of GDP were actually smaller by that amount, and hence real final sales of GDP rose at a 2.5% rate in the 4th quarter, which was still up from the real final sales growth rate of 1.0% in the 3rd quarter, when the much greater increase in inventory growth meant that the quarter’s growth in real final sales was considerably lower…
After an adjustment for a 1.5% decrease rate in export prices, our real exports of goods and services grew at a 1.6% rate in the fourth quarter, after real exports had fallen at a 4.9% rate in the 3rd quarter…similarly, after an adjustment for 1.8% lower import prices, our real imports grew at a 2.7% rate in the 4th quarter, down from their 9.3% growth rate in the 3rd quarter….as you’ll recall, exports are added to GDP because they are part of our production that was not consumed or added to investment in our country (& hence not counted elsewhere in this GDP calculation), while increases in imports subtract from GDP because they represent either consumption or investment that was added to another GDP component that shouldn’t have been because it was not produced here….thus the 4th quarter increase in real exports added 0.19 percentage points to 4th quarter GDP, while the greater 4th quarter import increase subtracted 0.41 percentage points from 4th quarter GDP, and hence our deteriorating trade balance subtracted a net of 0.22 percentage points from our 4th quarter GDP, after our deteriorating trade deficit had subtracted 1.99 percentage points from GDP in the third quarter..
Finally, real consumption and investment by all branches of government increased at a 0.4% annual rate in the 4th quarter, after growing at a 2.6% rate in the 3rd quarter, as federal government consumption and investment grew at a 1.6% rate, while state and local consumption and investment shrunk at a 0.3% rate….inflation adjusted federal spending for defense grew at a 6.9% rate and added 0.25 percentage points to 4th quarter GDP growth, while real non-defense federal consumption and investment shrunk at a 5.6% rate and subtracted 0.15 percentage points from GDP….note that federal government outlays for social insurance are not included in this GDP component; rather, they are included within personal consumption expenditures only when such funds are spent on goods or services, indicating an increase in the output of those goods or services….meanwhile, state and local government investment and consumption expenditures fell at a 0.3% annual rate and subtracted 0.03 percentage points from the growth of 4th quarter GDP, as real growth in state and local consumption expenditures added 0.04 percentage points while real state and local investment shrunk at a 3.6% annual rate and subtracted 0.07 percentage points from GDP.
See also:
- Advance Estimate 4Q2018 GDP Quarter-over-Quarter Growth at 2.6 Percent
- Strengthening Trade, Final Sales And Investment Numbers Support 4Q 2018 GDP
December Personal Income Rose 1.0%, Real Personal Spending Fell 0.6%
The Personal Income and Outlays report for December and the Personal Income report for January, released on Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, was actually concurrent with the release of the advance report 4th quarter GDP on Thursday, and hence the December data in this report had already been included in that report….and like that report, all the dollar values reported here are at an annual rate and seasonally adjusted, ie, they tell us what income, spending and saving would be for a year if each month’s adjusted income and spending were extrapolated over an entire year…however, the percentage changes are computed monthly, from one annualized figure to the next, and in this case of this report they give us the percentage change in each annualized metric from November to December, and in the case of the January report, personal income from December to January….
Hence, when the opening line of the December summary for this report tell us “Personal income increased $179.0 billion (1.0 percent) in December…“, they mean that the annualized figure for all types of personal income in December, $18,016.6 billion, was $179.0 billion, or more than 1.0% greater than the annualized personal income figure of $17,837.6 billion for November; the actual increase in personal income in December over November is not given….similarly, disposable personal income, which is income after taxes, rose by more than 1.0%, from an annual rate of $15,769.0 billion in November to an annual rate of $15,942.2 billion in December…the monthly contributors to the change in personal income, which can be seen in the Full Release & Tables (PDF) for this release, are also annualized figures…in December, the largest contributors to the $179.0 billion annual rate of increase in personal income were a $91.3 billion increase in dividend and interest income and a $45.2 billion increase in wages and salaries … the BEA tells us that $179.0 billion annualized increase in personal income was the largest increase since December 2012…December’s personal income figures are often skewed by year end bonuses and/or special dividends, and various tax strategies on the part of both companies and their employees…
For January, however, personal income decreased at an annual rate of $28.3 billion, or was down by more than 0.1%, from an annualized $18,016.6 billion in December to an annualized $17,992.9 billion in January…at the same time, disposable personal income decreased at a $35.1 billion annual rate, or by more than 0.2%, from a $15,942.2 billion annual rate in December to $15,907.0 billion annualized in January…the major reason for the January decrease in personal income was a $99.6 billion decrease in dividend and interest income from December’s inflated increase; wages and salaries rose at a $25.3 billion rate, while the largest increase in January’s personal income was a $77.9 billion annualized increase in personal current transfer receipts, led by a $30.8 billion increase in Social Security income … we assume that increase reflects the effects of a cost of living adjustment increase affecting payments from government social programs…
Meanwhile, seasonally adjusted personal consumption expenditures (PCE) for December, which were included in the change in real PCE in 4th quarter GDP that we reviewed earlier, fell at a $77.9 billion annual rate to a level of $14,176.2 billion in consumer spending annually, down more than 0.5% from November, which itself was revised from the originally reported annual rate of $14,243.5 billion to $14,252.7 billion…the decrease in December spending included a $67.2 billion annualized drop in spending for goods, which was presaged by the December retail sales report, and also a $18.2 billion decrease in spending for services, reflecting a seasonally adjusted decrease in household spending for electricity and utility gas, which was due to a warmer than normal December following a colder than normal November…total personal outlays for December, which includes interest payments, and personal transfer payments in addition to PCE, fell by an annualized $71.3 billion to an annual rate of $14,736.4 billion, which left personal savings, which is disposable personal income less total outlays, at a $1,205.7 billion annual rate in December, up from the revised $961.3 billion in annualized personal savings in November…as a result, the personal saving rate, which is personal savings as a percentage of disposable personal income, rose to 7.6%, from 6.1% in November, which itself was originally reported at 6.0%..
While our personal consumption expenditures accounted for 68.0% of our nominal fourth quarter GDP, before they were included in the computation of the change in our output they were first adjusted for inflation, to give us the real change in consumption, and hence the real change in goods and services that were produced for that consumption…..that was done with the price index for personal consumption expenditures, which is also included in this report, which is a chained price index based on 2012 prices = 100….from Table 9 in the pdf for this report, we find that the PCE price index rose from 108.866 in November to 108.929 in December, giving us a month over month inflation rate of 0.05787%, which the BEA reports as an increase of +0.1% … .at the same time, Table 11 gives us a year over year PCE price index increase of 1.7%, and a core price increase, excluding food and energy, of 1.9% for the year, both still below the Fed’s inflation target…applying the December inflation adjustment to the nominal change in December PCE shows that real PCE was down 0.594% for the month, which BEA reports as a 0.6% decrease in their rounded tables…note that when those PCE price indexes are applied to a given month’s annualized current dollar PCE, it yields that month’s annualized real PCE in chained 2012 dollars, which aren’t really dollar amounts at all, but merely the means that the BEA uses to compare one month’s or one quarter’s real goods and services produced to another….those results are shown in tables 7 and 8 of the income and outlays PDF, where the quarterly figures given are identical to those shown in table 3 in the GDP report, and which were used to compute the contribution of real personal consumption of goods and services to GDP.
See also:
Housing Starts Down in December After Prior Months Revised Lower; Permits Little Changed
The December report on New Residential Construction (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that new housing units were being started at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,078,000 in December, which was 11.2 percent (plus/minus 14.0 percent)* below the revised November estimated annual rate of 1,214,000 housing units started, and was 10.9 percent (plus/minus 16.1 percent)* below last December’s annual rate of 1,210,000 housing starts…the asterisks indicate that the Census does not have sufficient data to determine whether housing starts actually rose or fell in December or even over the past year, with the figure in parenthesis the most likely range of the change indicated; in other words, December housing starts could have been up by 2.8% or down by as much as 25.2% from those of November, with revisions of a greater magnitude in either direction possible…in this report, the annual rate for November housing starts was revised from the 1,256,000 reported two months ago to 1,214,000, while October starts, which were first reported at a 1,228,000 annual rate, were revised from last month’s initial revised figure of 1,217,000 annually to a 1,209,000 annual rate with this report….
The annual rates of starts reported here were extrapolated from a survey of a small percentage of US building permit offices visited by canvassing Census field agents, which estimated that 71,700 housing units were started in December, down from the 92,900 units that were started in November…of those housing units started in December, an estimated 49,000 were single family homes and 21,400 were units in structures with more than 5 units, down from the revised 59,100 single family starts in November and down from the 31,800 units started in structures with more than 5 units in November…
The monthly data on new building permits, with a smaller margin of error, are probably a better monthly indicator of new housing construction trends than the volatile and often revised housing starts data…in December, Census estimated new building permits for housing units were being issued at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,326,000, which was 0.3 percent (plus/minus 1.2 percent)* above the revised November rate of 1,322,000 permits, and was 0.5 percent (plus/minus 1.1 percent)* above the rate of building permit issuance in December a year earlier…the annual rate for housing permits issued in November was revised down from the originally reported 1,328,000….again, these annual estimates for new permits reported here were extrapolated from the unadjusted estimates collected monthly by canvassing census agents, which showed permits for roughly 95,400 housing units were issued in December, down from the revised estimate of 101,000 new permits issued in November…the December permits included 53,400 permits for single family homes, down from 60,900 single family permits issued in November, and 39,400 permits for housing units in apartment buildings with 5 or more units, up from 37,000 such multifamily permits a month earlier… for more graphs and commentary on this report, see the following two posts by Bill McBride at Calculated Risk: Housing Starts Decreased to 1.078 Million Annual Rate in December and Comments on December Housing Starts.
See also:
- December 2018 Residential Building Mixed
- January 2019 Pending Home Sales Jump?
- S and P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20 City Home Price Index December 2018 Year-over-Year Growth Unchanged
Factory Shipments Down 0.2% in December, Factory Inventories Unchanged
The Full Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, & Orders (pdf) for December from the Census Bureau reported that the seasonally adjusted value of new orders for manufactured goods increased by $0.3 billion or by less than 0.1 percent to $499.9 billion in December, following a decrease of 0.5% to $499.55 billion in November, which was revised from the 0.6% decrease to $499.2 billion that was reported for November earlier this month….however, since the Census Bureau does not even collect data on new orders for non durable goods for this widely watched “factory orders report”, both the “new orders” and “unfilled orders” sections of this report are really only useful as revised updates to the December advance report on durable goods which was released last week…on those durable goods revisions, the Census Bureau’s own summary, which precedes their detailed spreadsheet of the metrics included in this report, is quite clear and complete, so we’ll just quote directly from that summary here:
- Summary: New orders for manufactured goods in December, up following two consecutive monthly decreases, increased $0.3 billion or 0.1 percent to $499.9 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This followed a 0.5 percent November decrease. Shipments, down three consecutive months, decreased $0.9 billion or 0.2 percent to $504.9 billion. This followed a 0.5 percent November decrease. Unfilled orders, also down three consecutive months, decreased $0.9 billion or 0.1 percent to $1,180.3 billion. This followed a 0.2 percent November decrease. The unfilled ordersâ€toâ€shipments ratio was 6.55, down from 6.58 in November. Inventories, down two consecutive months, decreased $0.1 billion or virtually unchanged to $681.5 billion. This followed a 0.1 percent November decrease. The inventoriesâ€to†shipments ratio was 1.35, unchanged from November.
- New Orders New orders for manufactured durable goods in December, up two consecutive months, increased $2.9 billion or 1.2 percent to $254.1 billion, unchanged from the previously published increase. This followed a 0.9 percent November increase. Transportation equipment, up four of the last five months, led the increase, $2.8 billion or 3.2 percent to $89.9 billion. New orders for manufactured nondurable goods decreased $2.6 billion or 1.0 percent to $245.8 billion.
- Shipments of manufactured durable goods in December, up four of the last five months, increased $1.7 billion or 0.7 percent to $259.1 billion, down from the previously published 0.8 percent increase. This followed a 1.0 percent November increase. Transportation equipment, also up four of the last five months, led the increase, $1.4 billion or 1.6 percent to $91.3 billion. Shipments of manufactured nondurable goods, down two consecutive months, decreased $2.6 billion or 1.0 percent to $245.8 billion. This followed a 2.0 percent November decrease. Petroleum and coal products, also down two consecutive months, led the decrease, $2.5 billion or 4.8 percent to $50.5 billion.
- Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in December, down three consecutive months, decreased $0.9 billion or 0.1 percent to $1,180.3 billion, unchanged from the previously published decrease. This followed a 0.2 percent November decrease. Transportation equipment, also down three consecutive months, drove the decrease, $1.3 billion or 0.2 percent to $810.8 billion.
- Inventories of manufactured durable goods in December, up twentyâ€three of the last twentyâ€four months, increased $1.1 billion or 0.3 percent to $415.1 billion, up from the previously published 0.2 percent increase. This followed a 0.5 percent November increase. Primary metals, up twentyâ€five of the last twentyâ€six months, led the increase, $0.4 billion or 1.0 percent to $36.6 billion. Inventories of manufactured nondurable goods, down two consecutive months, decreased $1.2 billion or 0.4 percent to $266.5 billion. This followed a 0.9 percent November decrease. Petroleum and coal products, down three consecutive months, drove the decrease, $1.8 billion or 4.5 percent to $37.9 billion. By stage of fabrication, December materials and supplies increased 0.2 percent in durable goods and decreased 0.5 percent in nondurable goods. Work in process was virtually unchanged in durable goods and increased 0.1 percent in nondurable goods. Finished goods increased 0.5 percent in durable goods and decreased 0.6 percent in nondurable goods.
This report was issued on Wednesday before the release of the GDP estimate and hence the data included herein was included in the GDP report we reviewed earlier.
See also:
December Wholesale Sales Down 1.0%, Wholesale Inventories Up 1.1%
The December report on Wholesale Trade, Sales and Inventories (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that the seasonally adjusted value of wholesale sales was at
“$497.2 billion, down 1.0 percent (plus/minus 0.5 percent) from the revised November level, but were up 1.0 percent (plus/minus 0.7 percent) from the December 2017 level. The October 2018 to November 2018 percent change was revised from the preliminary estimate of down 0.6 percent (plus/minus 0.4 percent) to down 1.2 percent (plus/minus 0.4 percent).*“
That rather large revision to the October to November change was because November’s wholesale sales, which had been reported at $505.3 billion, were revised down to $501.9 billion….as an intermediate activity, wholesale sales are not included in GDP except insofar as they are a trade service, since the traded goods themselves do not represent an increase in the output of the goods produced or finally sold…
On the other hand, the monthly change in private inventories is a major factor in GDP, as additional goods left in a warehouse represent goods that were produced but not sold, and this December report estimated that wholesale inventories were valued at a seasonally adjusted
“$661.8 billion at the end of December, up 1.1 percent (plus/minus 0.4 percent) from the revised November level. Total inventories were up 7.3 percent (plus/minus 0.9 percent) from the revised December 2017 level.”
End of November inventories were revised from $654.0 billion to $654.7 billion.. Note: the December inventories indicated here were included in the GDP estimate we reviewed earlier, after being adjusted for changes in price.
See also:
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