Wholesale inventories increased 0.3% in January, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Wholesale sales dropped 3.1%.
Economists expected inventories would be flat and sales would slip 0.3%, according to the median estimate from Thomson Reuters.
Inventories for December were a revised unchanged level, first reported as a 0.1% increase. December sales were off 0.9%, first reported as a 0.4% decrease.
Inventories of durable goods were up 0.6% in January following a 0.2% increase in December. Sales of durable goods decreased 1.4% in January following a 0.6% rise in December.
Inventories of nondurable goods fell 0.1% in January following a 0.5% slip in December. Sales of nondurable goods dropped 4.6% in January following a 2.4% decline in December.
The inventories-to-sales ratio grew to 1.27 in January from 1.22 in December. A year ago the inventories-to-sales ratio was 1.18%.
