Retail Sales – November 2008

Monthly Sales At a Glance

• Total Retail and Food Service Sales: $355.7 billion
• Monthly Change: Down 1.8%
• Annual Change: Down 7.4%
• Retail Sales: Down 2%

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ADVANCE MONTHLY SALES FOR RETAIL TRADE AND FOOD SERVICES

NOVEMBER 2008
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $355.7 billion, a decrease of 1.8 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month and 7.4 percent (±0.7%) below November 2007. Total sales for the September through November 2008 period were down 4.5 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The September to October 2008 percent change was revised from -2.8 percent (±0.5%) to -2.9 percent (±0.2%).
Retail trade sales were down 2.0 percent (±0.5%) from October 2008 and were 8.5 percent (±0.7%) below last year. Motor vehicle and parts dealers sales were down 25.2 percent (±2.3%) from November 2007 and gasoline stations sales were down 22.0 percent (±1.7%) 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 – November 2008 [PDF]

Source: Commerce Department, Census Bureau