Business indicators slight GDP positive

From the ABS comes Business Indicators for the March quarter:

MARCH KEY FIGURES

			Dec Qtr 14 to Mar Qtr 15	Mar Qtr 14 to Mar Qtr 15
			%	%

Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)
	Manufacturing
		Trend	-1.7	-4.2
		Seasonally Adjusted	-4.1	-5.1
	Wholesale trade
		Trend	0.7	2.2
		Seasonally Adjusted	1.9	3.3
Inventories (Chain volume measures)
	Trend		0.0	0.7
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.4	1.5
Company gross operating profits
	Trend		0.2	-5.5
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.2	-7.5
Wages and salaries
	Seasonally Adjusted		-0.1	1.4

Weak wages and muted profits will weigh but inventories lifted 0.3 points above expectations lending a little support to Wednesday’s GDP number.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.