U.S. Business Inventories Down in April

U.S. business inventories fell slightly in April.

Inventories decreased by 0.2% to a seasonally adjusted $1.854 trillion, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a 0.2% decrease.

Sales, meanwhile, were unchanged from a month earlier.

The inventory-to-sales ratio, which measures how many months it would take for firms to deplete inventories at the current sales pace, was unchanged at 1.37 in April.

Retailers decreased stockpiles by 0.2%, wholesalers were down 0.5% and manufacturers up 0.1%.

The Commerce Department data on business inventories can be found at http://www.census.gov/mtis/www/data/pdf/mtis_current.pdf.

Write to Jeffrey Sparshott at jeffrey.sparshott@wsj.com.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 14, 2017 10:15 ET (14:15 GMT)