EconoIndicators

Monthly Sales At a Glance

• Total Retail and Food Service Sales: $382.9 billion
• Monthly Change: Down 0.4%
• Annual Change: Up 4.1%
• Retail Sales: $344.88 billion

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ADVANCE MONTHLY SALES FOR RETAIL TRADE AND FOOD SERVICES

DECEMBER 2007

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for December, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $382.9 billion, a decrease of 0.4 percent (±0.7%)* from the previous month, but 4.1 percent (±0.7%) above December 2006. Total sales for the 12 months of 2007 were up 4.2 percent (±0.4%) from 2006. Total sales for the October through December 2007 period were up 4.9 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The October to November 2007 percent change was revised from +1.2 percent (±0.7%) to +1.0 percent (±0.2%).

Retail trade sales were down 0.4 percent (±0.7%)* from November 2007, but were 4.3 percent (±0.8%) above last year. Gasoline station sales were up 18.5 percent (±2.8%) from December 2006 and sales of nonstore retailers were up 12.1 percent (±1.8%) from last December.

The scheduled release dates for 2008 are as follows: January 15, February 13, March 13, April 14, May 13, June 12, July 15, August 13, September 12, October 15, November 14, December 12.

The advance estimates are based on a subsample of the Census Bureau’s full retail and food services sample. A stratified random sampling method is used to select approximately 5,000 retail and food services firms whose sales are then weighted and benchmarked to represent the complete universe of over three million retail and food services firms. Responding firms account for approximately 65% of the MARTS dollar volume estimate. For an explanation of the measures of sampling variability included in this report, please see the Reliability of Estimates section on the last page of this publication.

Table 1 Retail Sales December 07

Table 2 Retail Sales December 07

Source: Department of Commerce, Census Bureau