Initial Jobless Claims (Jan 5)
| Survey | 340K |
| Actual | 322K |
| Prior | 336K |
| Revised | 337K |
Continuing Claims (Dec 29)
| Survey | 2730K |
| Actual | 2702K |
| Prior | 2761K |
| Revised | 2754K |
Looks like employment for December was pretty good.
Wholesale Inventories (Nov)
| Survey | 0.4% |
| Actual | 0.6% |
| Prior | 0.0% |
| Revised |
November sales look good, and October revised up.
Inventory/sales ratio hits new low:
U.S. Nov wholesale inventories up 0.6 pct
by Lisa Lambert
(Reuters) Inventories at U.S. wholesalers rose 0.6 percent in November, but they did not keep pace with sales, which saw the biggest monthly increase in more than two years on rising petroleum prices, the government reported Thursday.
The Commerce Department said sales rose by 2.2 percent in November, the biggest monthly gain since September 2005. That reflected an 8.9 percent boost in petroleum sales, which a Commerce Department official said reflected higher prices. It was also
the biggest rise since September 2005, when a devastating hurricane season drove up the price of oil.
Analysts polled by Reuters expected a 0.4 percent gain in inventories, after a flat reading in October, which was unrevised. The department had a big revision in sales during October, reporting a 1.4 percent rise instead of the prior estimate of 0.7 percent.
In a sign businesses are not building up stockpiles as the economy slows, the inventory-to-sales ratio — a measure of the number months it would take to deplete existing stocks at the current sales pace — fell to a record low of 1.07 months from October’s downwardly revised 1.08 months.
ICSC Chain Store Sales YoY (Dec)
| Survey | n/a |
| Actual | 0.9% |
| Prior | 3.5% |
| Revised | n/a |
Certainly moderating, but not all that bad.
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