Inventories suck away GDP

From ABS Business Indicators:

JUNE KEY FIGURES

			Mar Qtr 17 to Jun Qtr 17	Jun Qtr 16 to Jun Qtr 17
			%	%

Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)
	Manufacturing
		Trend	-0.2	-2.7
		Seasonally Adjusted	0.9	-2.8
	Wholesale trade
		Trend	0.2	4.9
		Seasonally Adjusted	-1.6	3.3
Inventories (Chain volume measures)
	Trend		0.3	1.7
	Seasonally Adjusted		-0.4	1.5
Company gross operating profits
	Trend		3.2	31.0
	Seasonally Adjusted		-4.5	21.2
Wages and salaries
	Seasonally Adjusted		1.2	1.6

Wages better but profits soft and inventories plunged from March QTR’s 1.2% to -0.4%. That’s a roughly -0.6% pull on GDP. Expectations were for 0.4% inventories so expect brokers to round down.

Still shaping up soft.

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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.