U.S. Business Inventories Rose in June

U.S. business inventories rose 0.5% in June to a seasonally adjusted $1.869 trillion, the Commerce Department said Tuesday.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a 0.5% gain.

Retailers increased stockpiles by 0.6%.

Manufacturing inventories ticked up 0.2% from the prior month, and wholesaler inventories rose 0.7% 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 1.38 at the end of June, down slightly from 1.40 a year earlier.

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

Write to Sarah Chaney at sarah.chaney@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 15, 2017 10:23 ET (14:23 GMT)