After jumping by 6.4% ($548 million) in August, seasonally-adjusted wholesale revenue in Alberta pulled back in September with sales down by 0.4% ($33.6 million).

Miscellaneous merchant wholesalers posted the largest decline in sales with a month-over-month drop of $155.7 million (-11.0%). Building material and supplies wholesalers saw sales decline by $125.4 million (-7.6%) while sales among personal and household goods wholesalers fell by $39.1 million (-8.7%).

Machinery and equipment wholesalers recorded the largest monthly increase with sales up by $208.2 million (+6.9%) while sales among farm product wholesalers rose by $41.3 million (+28.0%).

Despite the monthly pullback, wholesale revenue in Alberta in September 2022 was $1.7 billion higher than in September 2021 for a year-over-year increase of 22.7%.

Nationally, wholesale sales tickled up by $59.6 million (+0.1%) in September, but fell by 0.2% when calculated using constant dollars. (Constant dollar wholesale sales data are not available from Statistics Canada at the provincial level.)

Year-over-year sales in Canada were up by $9.1 billion or 12.4%.

Answer to the previous trivia question: The idea of compound interest can be traced back to a Babylonian clay tablet circa 2000-1700 BCE.

Today’s trivia question: In what year was the first iPhone released for sale in the United States?