AI Analysis: Wholesale trade, inventories

Executive Summary

Canadian wholesale trade inventories grew by 530.2% over 33 years, rising from $23.4 billion in January 1993 to $147.7 billion in January 2026, with the peak of $149.1 billion recorded in November 2025. The dataset covers 22,110 records across 46 NAICS categories and reveals a highly right-skewed distribution, where a small number of large-inventory sectors — such as Motor Vehicles, Food/Beverage/Tobacco, and Pharmaceuticals — dominate the overall averages. Recent years (2023–2026) stand out as a period of abnormal growth, with 26 outliers flagged and all top 5 extreme values concentrated in this window.

Key Findings

• Wholesale trade inventories surged 530.2% from $23.4 billion in January 1993 to $147.7 billion in January 2026, with the all-time peak of $149.1 billion reached in November 2025.
• The distribution is strongly right-skewed: the mean inventory value (~$9.8M) is more than double the median (~$3.7M), with the maximum value of ~$149M being nearly 15 times the mean.
• The middle 50% of all inventory values fall within a $6.4 million interquartile range ($1.3M–$7.8M), reflecting that most NAICS categories carry relatively modest inventories compared to top-tier sectors.
• 26 data points (~6.5% of monthly records) were flagged as statistical outliers using the IQR method, all concentrated in 2023–2026, with March 2023 recording the sharpest single-month jump at +11.6%.
• Most wholesale inventory categories are positively correlated over time, driven by shared macroeconomic forces such as inflation, economic cycles, and supply chain dynamics, with Motor Vehicle-related categories showing particularly strong co-movement.
• The dataset spans 46 NAICS categories and 92 distinct time series vectors, offering both broad aggregates like 'Wholesale trade [41]' and granular subsectors, available in both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted formats.
• The long-run mean of $64.3 billion with a standard deviation of $33.1 billion underscores how dramatically recent inventory levels (2023–2026) deviate from the 33-year historical norm.