June’s jobs report; May’s trade deficit, construction spending, factory inventories, and JOLTS

This week’s major agency issued economic releases included the Employment Situation Summary for June and the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for May, both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and three May reports that will input ​data into 2nd quarter GDP: the BEA’s report on our International Trade for May, and the May report on Construction Spending and the Full Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for May, both from the Census Bureau…

Privately issued reports released this week included the ADP Employment Report for June, the light vehicle sales report for June from Wards Automotive, which is the source data for the BEA report and which estimated that vehicles sold at a 15.29 million seasonally adjusted annual rate in June, down from the 15.90 million annual rate in May, and down from the 15.58 million annual rate in June of 2023, (NB: an annualized 600,000 in car sales were lost due to a cyberattack), and both of the widely followed purchasing manager’s survey​s from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM): the June Manufacturing Report On Business indicated that the manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) fell to 48.5% in June, down from 48.7% in May, which means that a slightly larger plurality of manufacturing industry purchasing managers reported deteriorating conditions in various facets of their business in June than a month earlier, and the June Services ISM Report On Business from the Institute for Supply Management, which saw ISM Services index fall to 48.8% in June, down from 53.8% in May, indicating that a plurality of service industry purchasing managers reported deteriorating conditions in various facets of their business in June for just the third time in 49 months…

Employers Added 206,000 Jobs in June, Unemployment Rate Rose to 31 Month High of 4.1%

The Employment Situation Summary for June indicated an increase in payroll jobs that was a bit above what had been forecast, but that more Americans reported they were unemployed in June than did in May, leading to a higher unemployment rate…seasonally adjusted estimates extrapolated from the establishment survey data projected that employers added 206,000 jobs in June, after the payroll job increase for May was revised down from 272,000 to 218,000 jobs, while the April​ jobs increase was revised down from 165,000 jobs to 108,000….with those revisions, that means that this report indicates an increase of just 95,000 more jobs than were reported last month, compared to expectations for a 180,000 job increase….those revisions also lowered the average job gain down to 177,000 per month over the past three months, less than the average 185,000 growth in the working age populaion….the unadjusted data indicates that there were actually 547,000 more payroll jobs in June than in May, as seasonal job increases that are typical in June for sectors such as construction, trade and transportation, and leisure and hospitality were normalized by the seasonal adjustments…

Increased jobs in government, health care and social assistance dominated the seasonally adjusted job increases in June, while several private sectors saw modest job decreases…since the BLS summary of the job gains by sector is clear and more detailed than our usual synopsis, we’ll just quote from that summary here:

• Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 206,000 in June, similar to the average monthly gain of 220,000 over the prior 12 months. In June, job gains occurred in government, health care, social assistance, and construction. (See table B-1.)
• Government employment rose by 70,000 in June, higher than the average monthly gain of 49,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, employment increased in local government, excluding education (+34,000) and in state government (+26,000).
• Health care added 49,000 jobs in June, lower than the average monthly gain of 64,000 over the prior 12 months. In June, employment rose in ambulatory health care services (+22,000) and hospitals (+22,000).
• Employment in social assistance increased by 34,000 in June, primarily in individual and family services (+26,000). Over the prior 12 months, social assistance had added an average of 22,000 jobs per month.
• Construction added 27,000 jobs in June, higher than the average monthly gain of 20,000 over the prior 12 months.
• Retail trade employment changed little in June (-9,000), after trending up earlier in the year. Furniture, home furnishings, electronics, and appliance retailers lost 6,000 jobs over the month, while warehouse clubs, supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers gained 5,000 jobs.
• Employment in professional and business services changed little in June (-17,000) and has shown little change over the year. Temporary help services employment declined by 49,000 over the month and is down by 515,000 since reaching a peak in March 2022. Employment in professional, scientific, and technical services continued to trend up in June (+24,000).
• Employment showed little change over the month in other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; transportation and warehousing; information; financial activities; leisure and hospitality; and other services.

The establishment survey also showed that the average hourly pay for all employees rose by 10 cents to $35.00 an hour in June, after it had increased by a revised 13 cents an hour in May; at the same time, the average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 10 cents to $30.05 an hour….reporting from employers also showed that the average workweek for all private payroll employees remained at to 34.4 hours for a third month, while hours for production and non-supervisory personnel edged down a tenth of an hour to 33.7 hours…At the same time, the manufacturing workweek was unchanged at 40.2 hours, while factory overtime remained at an average of 3.0 hours..

Meanwhile, the seasonally adjusted extrapolation from the June household survey estimated that the count of those who reported being employed rose by an estimated 116,000 to 161,199,000, while the similarly estimated number of those counted as being unemployed rose by 162,000 to 6,811,000; which together meant that June saw a rounded net increase of 277,000 in the total labor force…since the working age population had grown by 190,000 over the same period, that meant the number of employment aged individuals who were not in the labor force fell by 87,000 to 100,429,000….the increase of those in the labor force was enough to raise the labor force participation rate, from 62.5% in May to 62.6% in June, same as it was in June of 2023….however, the increase in the number employed vis a vis the increase in the population was not enough to change the employment to population ratio, which we could think of as an employment rate, as it remained at 60.1% in June, which was down from 60.3% a year earlier…meanwhile, the increase in the number counted as unemployed was enough to increase the unemployment rate, which rose from 4.0% in May to a 31 month high of 4.1% in June….on the other hand, the number who reported they were involuntarily working part time fell by 199,000 to 4,220,000 in June, which meant that the alternative measure of unemployment, U-6, which includes those “employed part time for economic reasons”, remained unchanged at 7.4% in June…

Like most reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment situation press release itself is easy to read and understand, so you can get more details on these two reports from there…note that almost every paragraph in that release points to one or more of the tables that are linked to on the bottom of the release, and those tables are also on a separate html page here that you can open it alongside the press release to avoid the need to scroll up and down the page..

Job Openings, Hiring and Layoffs Rose in May, Job Quitting was Little Changed

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for May from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that seasonally adjusted job openings rose by 221,000, from 7,919,000 in April to 8,140,000 in May, after April’ job openings were revised 140,000 lower, from the 8,059,000 reported last month to 7,919,000…May’s jobs openings were still 12.6% lower than the 9,311,000 job openings reported for May a year ago, while the job openings ratio expressed as a percentage of those employed rose from 4.8​% in April to 4.9% in May, but was down from 5.6% in May a year ago…the greatest percentage increase in May job openings was with state and local government​s, where openings rose by 117,000 to 615,000, while job openings across accommodation and food services fell by 147,000 to 771,000 (see table 1 for more details)…like most BLS releases, the press release for report is easy to understand and also refers us to the associated tables for the data cited, which are all linked to at the end of the release…

The JOLTS release also reports on labor turnover, which consists of hires and job separations, which in turn is further divided into layoffs and discharges, those who quit, and ‘other separations’, which includes retirements and deaths….in May, seasonally adjusted new hires totaled 5,756,000, up by 141,000 from the revised 5,615,000 who were hired or rehired in April, as the hiring rate as a percentage of all employed rose from 3.5%​ in April to 3.6%​ in May, while it was still down from the hiring rate of 4.0% in May a year earlier (details of hiring by industry since January are in table 2)…meanwhile, total separations rose by 85,000, from 5,337,000 in April to 5,422,000 in May, while the separations rate as a percentage of the employed rose was unchanged at 3.4% in May, which was still down from the separations rate of 3.8% in May a year ago (see table 3)…subtracting the 5,422,000 total separations from the total hires of 5,756,000 would imply there was an increase of 334,000 jobs in May, more than the revised payroll job increase of 217,000 for May reported by the June establishment survey this week, and just outside of the expected +/-110,000 margin of error in these incomplete extrapolations…

Breaking down the seasonally adjusted job separations, the BLS reports that 3,459,000 of us voluntarily quit their jobs in May, up by 7,000 from the 3,452,000 who quit their jobs in April, while the quits rate, widely watched as an indicator of worker confidence, remained at 2.2% of total employment in May, while it was still down from 2.6% a year earlier (see details in table 4)….in addition to those who quit, 1,654,000 were either laid off, fired or otherwise discharged in May, up by 112,000 from the 1,542,000 who were discharged in April, while the discharges rate remained at 1.0% of all those who were employed during the month, which was also the same as the discharges rate of a year earlier… meanwhile, other separations, which includes retirements and deaths, were at 309,000 in May, down by 34,000 from 343,000 in April, for an ‘other separations’ rate of 0.2%, the same as in April and as in May of a year ago….both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted details by industry and by region on hires and job separations, and on job quits and discharges can be accessed using the links to tables at the bottom of the press release…

US Trade Deficit Rose 0.8% in May on Imbalance in Industrial Supplies and Materials

Our trade deficit was 0.8% higher in May as the value of both our exports and our imports both decreased, but our exports fell by 50% more than our imports did….the Commerce Department report on our international trade in goods and services for May indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services international trade deficit rose by a rounded $0.6 billion to $75.1 billion in May, from a April deficit of $74.5 billion, which was revised down from the $74.6 billion deficit reported for April last month….also in rounded totals, the value of our May exports fell by $1.8 billion or 0.7% to $261.7 billion. as a $2.9 billion decrease to $169.6 billion in our exports of goods was partly offset an increase of $1.1 billion to $92.1 billion in our exports of services, while our imports fell by $1.2 billion or 0.3% to $336.7 billion as a $2.0 billion decrease to $269.7 billion in our imports of goods was partly offset by a $0.9 billion increase to $67.0 billion in our imports of services…export prices were on average 0.6% lower in May, which means the decrease in our exports was mostly price related and that real exports only fell on the order of 0.1%, while import prices were 0.4% lower, meaning the decrease in our imports was all price related and that real imports probably rose on the order of 0.1%..

The decrease in May’s exports of goods was largely due to lower exports of industrial supplies and materials and of automotive products….referencing the Full Release and Tables for the May trade report (pdf), in Exhibit 7 we find that our exports of industrial supplies and materials fell by $2,073 million to $58,740 million, led by a $538 million decrease in our exports of nonmonetary gold, a $434 million decrease in our exports of petroleum products other than fuel oil, and a $433 million decrease in our exports of fuel oil, while our exports of automotive vehicles, parts, and engines fell by $473 million to $14,377 million on lower exports of trucks, buses, and special purpose vehicles and of automotive parts and accessories other than tires, engines or bodies…in addition, our exports of capital goods fell by $344 million to $52,308 million on a $567 million decrease in our exports of civilian aircraft and a $417 million decrease in our exports of electric apparatuses, our exports of foods, feeds and beverages fell by $172 million to $12,723 million, and our exports of other goods not categorized by end use rose by $320 million to $7,374 million…partly offsetting the decreases in those export categories, our exports of consumer goods rose by $322 million to $22,524 million ​due to a $629 million increase in our exports of gem diamonds….

Exhibit 8 in the Full Release and Tables gives us seasonally adjusted details on our goods imports and shows that lower imports of consumer goods and of automotive products were partly offset by higher imports industrial supplies and materials.…our imports of consumer goods fell by $2,030 million to $63,664 million as a $4,233 million decrease in our imports of pharmaceutical preparations was partly offset by a $998 million increase in our imports of cell phones and a $311 million increase in our imports of gem diamonds, while our imports of automotive vehicles, parts and engines fell by $1,458 million to $40,206 million on a $641 million decrease in our imports of new and used passenger cars and a 485 million decrease in our imports of automotive parts and accessories other than tires, engines or bodies…in addition, our imports of capital goods fell by $140 million to $77,953 million due to a $431 million decrease in our imports of civilian aircraft….partly offsetting the decreases in those import categories, our imports of industrial supplies and materials rose by $1​,434 million to $56,707 million on a $1​,034 million increase in our imports of crude oil, an $879 million increase in our imports of nuclear fuel materials, and a $308 million increase in our imports of copper, our imports of foods, feeds, and beverages rose by $18 million to $17,522 million, and our imports of other goods not categorized by end use rose by $286 million to $11,362 million…

The press release for this month’s report summarizes Exhibit 19 in the full release pdf for May, which gives us surplus and deficit details on our goods trade with selected countries:

The May figures show surpluses, in billions of dollars, with Netherlands ($4.1), South and Central America ($3.5), Australia ($1.9), Hong Kong ($1.6), Singapore ($1.3), Brazil ($0.5), and Belgium ($0.4). Deficits were recorded, in billions of dollars, with China ($23.9), European Union ($19.3), Mexico ($14.1), Vietnam ($10.3), Germany ($7.3), Japan ($6.3), South Korea ($6.2), Ireland ($5.7), Taiwan ($5.3), Canada ($5.0), Italy ($4.8), India ($3.8), Malaysia ($2.0), France ($1.7), Switzerland ($1.7), Israel ($0.6), Saudi Arabia ($0.1), and United Kingdom (less than $0.1).

• The deficit with China increased $1.9 billion to $23.9 billion in May. Exports decreased $0.5 billion to $11.7 billion and imports increased $1.3 billion to $35.6 billion.
• The deficit with Mexico increased $1.3 billion to $14.1 billion in May. Exports decreased $0.7 billion to $27.4 billion and imports increased $0.7 billion to $41.6 billion.
• The deficit with Ireland decreased $3.0 billion to $5.7 billion in May. Exports increased $0.1 billion to $1.6 billion and imports decreased $2.9 billion to $7.3 billion.

To gauge the impact of April and May trade on 2nd quarter GDP growth figures, we use exhibit 10 in the pdf for this report, which gives us monthly goods trade figures by end use category and in total, already adjusted for inflation in chained 2017 dollars, the same inflation adjustment that’s used by the BEA to compute trade figures for GDP, with the only difference here being that the ​figures here are not annualized…. from that table, we can figure that the 1st quarter’s real exports of goods averaged 144,106.3 million monthly in in 2017 dollars, while inflation adjusted April and May exports were at 142,613 million and 141,333 million respectively in that same 2017 dollar quantity index representation….after averaging those inflation adjusted April and May goods export figures and then computing the annualized change between that average and the average of the first quarter, we find that the 2nd quarter’s real exports of goods had been running at a 5.79% annual rate below those of the 1st quarter, or at a pace that would subtract about 0.43 percentage points from 2nd quarter GDP if it had continued at the same rate through June…..In a similar manner, we can figure that our 1st quarter real imports averaged 231,460.7 million monthly in chained 2017 dollars, while inflation adjusted April and May imports were at 236,625 million and 235,792 million in those same inflation adjusted dollars respectively….that would mean that so far in the 2nd quarter, our real imports of goods have increased at a 8.46% annual rate from those of the 1st quarter…since imports are subtracted from GDP because they represent the portion of consumption or investment that occurred during the quarter that was not produced domestically, their increase at a 8.46% rate would subtract about 0.92 percentage points from 2nd quarter GDP…hence, if our goods trade deficit at the April – May level is maintained through June, our deteriorating balance of trade in goods would subtract about 1.35 percentage points from the growth of 2nd quarter GDP….

Note that we have not figured the impact of the usually less volatile change in services here because the Census does not provide inflation adjusted data on those, but that our exports of services increased by a nominal $1.1 billion while our imports of services increased $0.9 billion, which thus suggests that May’s trade in services would add slightly to 2nd quarter GDP, following what we judged would be a negligible impact on 2nd quarter GDP from the change in the balance of trade in services we saw in April….

Construction Spending Fell 0.1% in May, ​but with April, Adds 8 Basis Pts to 2nd Quarter GDP

The Census Bureau’s report on construction spending for May (pdf) estimated that May’s seasonally adjusted construction spending would work out to $2,139.8 billion annually if extrapolated over an entire year, which was 0.1 percent (±1.0 percent)* below the revised annualized estimate of $2,142.1 billion of construction spending in April, and 2.4 percent (±1.2 percent) above the estimated annualized level of construction spending in May of last year…with this release, unadjusted construction spending data was revised back to January 2023 and seasonally adjusted data was revised back to January 2017…as a result of that and the usual monthly revision, the April spending estimate was revised 2.1% higher, from $2,099.0 billion to $2,142.1 billion, while the annual rate of construction spending for March was revised 1.6, from $2,101.5 billion to $2,135.8 billion…the upward revision to annualized March construction spending should have positive impact on first quarter GDP when the annual revisions to GDP are released in late September, but since 4th quarter construction was also revised, the entire quarter over quarter inflation adjusted change will need to be recomputed to determine the ultimate impact…after revisions, construction spending tor the first 5 months of 2024 now amounts to $836.3 billion, 8.8 percent (±1.2 percent) more than the $768.6 billion in construction spending for the same 5 months of 2023…

A further breakdown of the different subsets of construction spending are provided by a Census summary, which precedes the detailed spreadsheets, is included below:\

• Private Construction Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,652.1 billion, 0.3 percent (±0.7 percent)* below the revised April estimate of $1,656.7 billion. Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $918.2 billion in May, 0.2 percent (±1.3 percent)* below the revised April estimate of $920.3 billion. Nonresidential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $733.9 billion in May, 0.3 percent (±0.7 percent)* below the revised April estimate of $736.5 billion.
• Public Construction In May, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $487.6 billion, 0.5 percent (±1.8 percent)* above the revised April estimate of $485.4 billion. Educational construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $102.1 billion, 0.6 percent (±2.5 percent)* above the revised April estimate of $101.5 billion. Highway construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $147.6 billion, 0.5 percent (±5.3 percent)* below the revised April estimate of $148.3 billion.

This construction spending report will be used as source data for 3 subcomponents of GDP; investment in private non-residential structures, investment in residential structures, and government investment outlays, for both state and local governments…. however, gauging the impact of the revised April and May construction spending as reported here on 2nd quarter GDP is difficult because all figures given in this report are in nominal dollars and as you know, data used to compute the change in GDP must be adjusted for changes in price…accurately adjusting construction spending for price changes is no easy matter, either, because the National Income and Product Accounts Handbook, Chapter 6 (pdf), lists a multitude of privately published deflators that are used by the BEA for the various components of non-residential investment, ie, such as using the Engineering News Record construction cost index for utilities’ construction….in lieu of trying to find and adjust for all of the obscure price indices the BEA uses, we’ve opted to just use the producer price index for final demand construction as an inexact shortcut to make an aggregate price adjustment sufficient to make an estimate…that index showed that aggregate construction costs were unchanged in May, after being up by 0.2% from March to April, up by 0.1% from February to March, and unchanged from January to February…

On that basis, we can estimate that May construction costs were roughly 0.2% more than those of March, and roughly 0.3% more than those of February and of January, and were obviously unchanged from those of April…we then use those percentages to adjust spending in each of those months for the differences, if any, in the price of construction vis a vis that of May….annualized construction spending in millions of dollars for the five months in question is given here as 2,139,792 for May, 2,142,126 for April, 2,135,771 for March, 2,133,750 for February, and 2,122,229 for January….thus to figure the annual rate of change of the average of May’s nominal construction spending figure of $2,139,792 and April’s figure of $2,142,126 from those of the ‘inflation adjusted’ figures of the first quarter, our calculation becomes (((2,139,792 + (2,142,126 * 1.000)) / 2) / ((( 2,135,771 * 1.002) + (2,133,750 * 1.003) + (2,122,229 * 1.003)) / 3) ) ^ 4 = 1.00882166, which means that after adjusting for inflation, real construction growing at a 0.88% annual rate over the first 2 months of the second quarter…put another way, that would mean real construction spending has been growing at a $4.70 billion annual rate, which means that even if June construction shows no improvement, the 2nd quarter the growth of real construction would still add a net of about 0.08 percentage points to 2nd quarter GDP across those components that it influences…

Factory Shipments Down 0.7% in May, Factory Inventories Up 0.2%, both on Lower Prices

The Full Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, & Orders (pdf) for May from the Census Bureau reported that the seasonally adjusted value of new orders for manufactured goods decreased in value by $3.0 billion or 0.5 percent to $583.1 billion in May, following an increase of 0.4% to $586.1 billion in April, which was revised from the 0.7% increase to $588.2 billion reported for April last 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 accurate as a revised update to the May advance report on durable goods we reported on last week…on those 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 May, down following three consecutive monthly increases, decreased $3.0 billion or 0.5 percent to $583.1 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This followed a 0.4 percent April increase. Shipments, also down following three consecutive monthly increases, decreased $4.2 billion or 0.7 percent to $584.8 billion. This followed a 0.8 percent April increase. Unfilled orders, up forty-six consecutive months, increased $3.1 billion or 0.2 percent to $1,402.8 billion. This followed a 0.1 percent April increase. The unfilled orders-to-shipments ratio was 7.18, up from 7.11 in April. Inventories, up five of the last six months, increased $1.8 billion or 0.2 percent to $860.1 billion. This followed a 0.1 percent April increase. The inventories-to-shipments ratio was 1.47, up from 1.46 in April.
• New orders for manufactured durable goods in May, up four consecutive months, increased $0.2 billion or 0.1 percent to $282.9 billion, unchanged from the previously published increase. This followed a 0.2 percent April increase. Transportation equipment, up three of the last four months, drove the increase, rising $0.4 billion or 0.5 percent to $95.3 billion. New orders for manufactured nondurable goods decreased $3.2 billion or 1.0 percent to $300.2 billion.
• Shipments of manufactured durable goods in May, down following three consecutive monthly increases, decreased $1.1 billion or 0.4 percent to $284.6 billion, down from the previously published 0.3 percent decrease. This followed a 1.1 percent April increase. Transportation equipment, also down following three consecutive monthly increases, led the decrease, $0.8 billion or 0.9 percent to $91.9 billion. Shipments of manufactured nondurable goods, down following three consecutive monthly increases, decreased $3.2 billion or 1.0 percent to $300.2 billion. This followed a 0.5 percent April increase. Petroleum and coal products, also down following three consecutive monthly increase, drove the decrease, $4.0 billion or 5.7 percent to $65.2 billion.
• Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in May, up forty-six consecutive months, increased $3.1 billion or 0.2 percent to $1,402.8 billion, unchanged from the previously published increase. This followed a 0.1 percent April increase. Transportation equipment, up forty-three of the last forty-four months, drove the increase, $3.4 billion or 0.4 percent to $909.0 billion.
• Inventories of manufactured durable goods in May, up five of the last six months, increased $1.4 billion or 0.3 percent to $529.9 billion, unchanged from the previously published increase. This followed a 0.1 percent April increase. Transportation equipment, up eleven of the last twelve months, led the increase, $1.1 billion or 0.7 percent to $172.3 billion. Inventories of manufactured nondurable goods, up four consecutive months, increased $0.4 billion or 0.1 percent to $330.2 billion. This followed a 0.1 percent April increase. Petroleum and coal products, up three of the last four months, led the increase, $0.4 billion or 0.8 percent to $48.0 billion. By stage of fabrication, May materials and supplies increased 0.2 percent in durable goods and 0.4 percent in nondurable goods. Work in process increased 0.8 percent in durable goods and 0.9 percent in nondurable goods. Finished goods decreased 0.3 percent in durable goods and 0.4 percent in nondurable goods.

To estimate the effect of those May factory inventories on 2nd quarter GDP, they must first be adjusted for changes in price with appropriate components of the producer price index…by stage of fabrication, the value of finished goods inventories fell 0.4% to $295,642 million; while the value of work in process inventories rose 0.8% to $251,328 million, and the value of materials and supplies inventories rose 0.3% to $313,163 million…the May producer price index reported that prices for finished goods were on average 0.8% lower, that prices for intermediate processed goods were 1.5% lower, while prices for unprocessed goods averaged 1.8% lower….assuming similar valuations for like types of inventories, those producer price changes would suggest that May’s real finished goods inventories were about 0.4% more than April’s, that real inventories of intermediate processed goods were about 2.3% higher, and that real raw material inventories were about 2.1% higher…since real NIPA factory inventories were just a bit larger in the 1st quarter, and since this report seems to indicate a fairly large increase in May’s real inventories, following a modest decrease in April, it appears that the real change in factory inventories will now have a small positive impact on the growth rate of 2nd quarter GDP…

 

 

(the above is the synopsis that accompanied my regular sunday morning news links emailing, which in turn was mostly selected from my weekly blog post on the global glass onion…if you’d be interested in receiving my weekly emailing of selected links, most of which are picked from the aforementioned GGO posts, contact me…)