The December 2009 Retail Manufacturing Trade Inventories & Sales data is out today.

Sales are up 0.9% from last month and inventories dropped 0.2% from last month. The sales to inventories ratio is now at pre-recession levels to 1.26.

Depleted inventories might mean more hires as manufacturing will need to make more stuff to sell which they do not have on hand. But key to that is demand and why sales, new orders is so important.

Manufacturing sales were up 1.9%, while retailers dropped 0.1% in sales.

This report again points to a revision since inventories were such a large part of that figure. Recall inventories themselves were kind of a statistical anomaly due to the majority of it being farm products.