US Retail & Food Services Sales Continue to Climb

July 15, 2009

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Automotive | CPG & FMCG | Financial Services | Retail & E-Commerce

US retail and food services sales for June 2009 continued the positive trajectory they began in May, rising 0.6% last month, according to advance estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, Retailer Daily reports.

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Total June sales were $342.1 billion, compared with $340 billion in May, while total sales for the April – June 2009 period were down 9.6% from the same period in 2008. June 2009 sales were 9% lower than in June 2008.

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

Sector Breakdowns

Of the 13 separate primary retail and food service sectors tracked by the Census Bureau, seven reported increased sales in June 2009 and six reported decreased sales. The primary sectors with the highest increases were gasoline stations, with 5%, and motor vehicle and parts retailers, with 2.3%. The primary sectors with the largest decreases were food services and drinking places, and building material, garden equipment and supplies dealers, which both reported a 0.9% drop.

Compared with June 2008, gasoline station sales were down 31.6% and motor vehicle and parts dealer sales were down 14.1%.

Other Financial News

Recent consumer financial news has been mixed. The US trade deficit shrank 9.7% in May 2009. Consumer credit decreased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.5% in May 2009, while borrowing figures for April 2009 show that US consumers decreased borrowing by 16%.

Moreover, US consumers saved $768.8 billion in May 2009, a 26.3% increase from the $608.5 billion saved in April. Personal saving as a percentage of disposable income was 6.9% in May, compared with 5.6% in April. Similar jumps in total personal saving figures and percentages occurred between March and April 2009. Consumers’ personal consumption expenditures, which essentially reflect consumer spending, increased 0.3% in May.

At the same time, the US unemployment rate rose from 9.4% in May to 9.5% in June and the Consumer Confidence Index fell from 54.8 in May to 49.3 in June. In another negative economic sign, the RPI (Restaurant Performance Index) slid from 98.6 in April 2009 to 98.3 in May 2009, registering its first decline since December 2008.

About the data: The US Census Bureau’s 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 3M retail and food services firms.

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