Retail Sales Appear to Increase in July

August 12, 2010  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in economic news on August 13, 2010

The U.S. Census Bureau announced Friday that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for July rose 0.4 percent were $362.7 billion from June, and 5.5 percent above July 2009.

Those figures were adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes.

Total sales for the May through July 2010 period were up 5.9 percent from the same period a year ago. The May to June 2010 percent change was revised from -0.5 percent to -0.3 percent.

Retail trade sales were up 0.4 percent from June 2010, and 5.9 percent above last year. Nonstore retailers sales were up 12.6 percent from July 2009, and gasoline stations sales were up 12.2 percent 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 more than 3 million retail and food services firms.