Sales by U.S. merchant wholesalers increased in December while inventories expanded more modestly, according to the latest wholesale trade report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Sales, excluding manufacturers’ sales branches and offices, reached $722.1 billion in December, adjusted for seasonal variation and trading-day differences but not for price changes. That was 1% higher than the revised November total and 5.2% above December 2024, the Census Bureau said. The agency also revised November’s figures, showing sales rose 1.4% from October, a touch stronger than the previous estimate of a 1.3% increase.
Economists and industry analysts track monthly wholesale data as an early indicator of broader demand conditions since wholesalers bridge manufacturing and retail supply chains. The December increase marked the fourth consecutive monthly gain in sales, signaling continued momentum at the end of 2025.
Total inventories of merchant wholesalers stood at $918.0 billion at the end of December, up 0.2% from the revised November level and 2.9% above the December 2024 figure, the report showed. The December inventory estimate was unchanged from the advance estimate released earlier in January.
Because sales rose more quickly than inventories, the inventories-to-sales ratio — a measure of how many months it would take to deplete existing stock at the current sales pace — declined to 1.27 in December from 1.30 a year earlier. A falling ratio typically reflects stronger sales relative to inventory accumulation.
Wholesale inventories include goods held by distributors across a wide range of sectors, from industrial equipment to consumer products. In the detailed supplemental tables accompanying the Census Bureau’s report, the agency breaks out sales and inventories by type of business, showing performance trends for both durable and nondurable goods wholesalers. Durable goods categories include items such as machinery and automotive products, while nondurable categories cover commodities like paper products and pharmaceuticals. Those detailed tables indicate that sales increases in December were not confined to a single segment but occurred across multiple kinds of wholesale businesses.
Wholesale trade statistics are an important input into broader measures of economic activity, including estimates of gross domestic product. Because wholesalers function as intermediaries between producers and retailers, shifts in sales or inventories can foreshadow changes in manufacturing output, retail demand, and supply chain behavior.
The monthly wholesale trade report provides a snapshot of distributor activity and serves as an early gauge of near-term trends in the U.S. economy.
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