WASHINGTON – Retail and food services sales last month rose 0.7 percent to $371.6 billion, an increase of 3.8 percent from March 2006, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Census Bureau announced today. The increase was the biggest in three months, Bloomberg News observed.
Sales for the January to March quarter increased 3.2 percent over the year-ago period.
Excluding food services, retail sales rose 0.6 percent in March to 3.6 percent above their year-ago level. Leading the year-over-year increase were sales at clothing and clothing accessories stores, rising 8.0 percent above March 2006, and general merchandise stores, rising 5.8 percent.
Excluding automobiles, sales rose 0.8 percent in March, doubling February’s 0.4-percent rise, led by sales of clothing and sporting goods.
“The consumer is hanging in there pretty well,” Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc. in New York, told Bloomberg. Today’s report “certainly argues against any need for the Fed to panic and cut rates, and it’s consistent with what they’ve been saying about the economy.”
Economists credited unseasonably mild weather with helping boost sales last month, Bloomberg said; the second-warmest March on record, it followed the coldest February since 1994.
Additional information, including “Advance Monthly Retail Sales for Retail and Food Services,” is available at www.census.gov.
