Business Indicators suggest weak GDP

The ABS has released its quarterly Business Indicators series, which is a direct input into GDP via inventories and company profits and the news is likely to pressure Wednesday’s GDP:

JUNE KEY FIGURES

			Mar Qtr 13 to Jun Qtr 13	Jun Qtr 12 to Jun Qtr 13
			%	%
Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)
	Manufacturing
		Trend	-0.7	-1.9
		Seasonally Adjusted	0.1	-1.0
	Wholesale trade
		Trend	-0.6	1.0
		Seasonally Adjusted	0.6	1.7
Inventories (Chain volume measures)
	Trend		-0.1	0.6
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.2	1.1
Company gross operating profits
	Trend		1.2	1.6
	Seasonally Adjusted		-0.8	-0.4
Wages and salaries
	Seasonally Adjusted		1.0	2.8

So, that’s 0.2 for inventories which is weak but could have been worse and minus 0.8 for business profits which is very weak. Wages had a better quarter.

These numbers now go into some kind of Lotto machine and come out in the lottery that is GDP. It’s virtually impossible to predict the result but the indicators are at least saying that Wednesday’s GDP will be in the tawdry range anywhere from zero to 0.5%.