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March 15, 2024WHOLESALE TRADE, JANUARY 2024 NOTE
Starting with the March 2023 reference month, petroleum products data are available within Statistics Canada's data on wholesale trade. This distorts year-over-year and year-to-date comparisons as well as the national inventory to sales ratio. The effect causes data for oil-producing regions to increase more rapidly than in other provinces.
Monthly (seasonally adjusted, January 2024 vs December 2023)
Nova Scotia wholesale trade increased 6.1% to $1.36 billion. National wholesale trade increased 0.5% to $117.6 billion in December. Six provinces reported an increase, led by Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island reported the largest decline.
Year-over-year (seasonally adjusted, January 2024 vs January 2023)
Nova Scotia wholesale trade increased 11.0%. Canada's wholesale trade increased 35.3% with the recent inclusion of petroleum, oil seeds and grains in the data series. All provinces reported year over year increases in wholesale trade. Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Manitoba, and British Columbia reported the largest gains. The gain in Saskatchewan was the slowest.
The largest dollar contributions to Nova Scotia's wholesale trade came from food and beverage wholesalers as well as building materials wholesalers.
The largest percentage gains in Nova Scotia's to wholesale trade were among motor vehicle and parts wholesalers.
TRENDS
Over the past year, there has been high volatility in Nova Scotia's wholesale trade with several large declines and recoveries, though the value has stabilized in recent months. Canada reported a very large increase as the data series was changed to include petroleum products.
After the break in the data series with the inclusion of petroleum products in March 2023, wholesale inventories trended down as a share of sales, but there has been a recovery in recent months, rising to 1.20 in January 2024.
Source: Statistics Canada. Table 20-10-0074-01 Wholesale trade, sales (x 1,000); Table 20-10-0076-01 Wholesale trade, inventories (x 1,000)
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