EconoIndicators

Monthly Sales At a Glance

• Total Retail and Food Service Sales: $384.6 billion
• Monthly Change: Down 0.1%
• Annual Change: Up 2.6%
• Retail Sales: Down 0.1%

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ADVANCE MONTHLY SALES FOR RETAIL TRADE AND FOOD SERVICES

JULY 2008
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for July, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $384.6 billion, a decrease of 0.1 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month and 2.6 percent (±0.7%) above July 2007. Total sales for the May through July 2008 period were up 2.7 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The May to June 2008 percent change was revised from +0.1 percent (±0.5%)* to +0.3 percent (±0.2%).
Retail trade sales were down 0.1 percent (±0.5%)* from June 2008, but were 2.6 percent (±0.7%) above last year. Gasoline station sales were up 24.6 percent (±2.0%) from July 2007 and sales of nonstore retailers were up 7.7 percent (±2.0%) from last year.
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.

Retail Sales - July 2008 [PDF]

Source: Commerce Department, Census Bureau