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February 14, 2025WHOLESALE TRADE, DECEMBER AND ANNUAL 2024 Monthly (seasonally adjusted, December 2024 vs November 2024)
Nova Scotia wholesale trade declined 2.6% to $1.30 billion. National wholesale trade dropped 0.8% to $116.31 billion. Seven provinces reported declines in December, with Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick reporting the largest declines. The largest gain was in British Columbia.
Year-over-year (seasonally adjusted, December 2024 vs December 2023)
Nova Scotia wholesale trade increased 2.0% in December when compared with the same month last year, while Canada's wholesale trade declined 1.4%. Seven provinces reported higher year-over-year wholesale trade with Manitoba reporting the fastest gain. Alberta reported the largest year-over-year decline in wholesale trade.
Annual (2024 vs 2023)
Nova Scotia wholesale trade increased 7.4% in 2024 compared to 2023. Canada's wholesale trade increased 3.1%. Eight provinces reported annual increases in wholesale trade. Newfoundland and Labrador reported the largest gain, while Saskatchewan reported the largest decline.
Nova Scotia's wholesale trade was valued at $15.94 billion in 2024. Following a decline in 2020, Nova Scotia's wholesale trade has increased each year, in part due to price increases.
TRENDS
In 2024, volatility in Nova Scotia's wholesale trade has smoothed out, with a declining trend in recent months. Canada reported a very large increase as the data series was changed to include petroleum products, but has tracked down in recent months.
After the break in the data series with the inclusion of petroleum products in March 2023, wholesale inventories trended down. In recent months, wholesale inventories as a share of sales have been volatile around a stable trend, with a value of 1.21 in December 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-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.
Due to suppression of data in food and beverage wholesalers for Nova Scotia (the largest category), year-to-date results by category will not be available.
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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