WASHINGTON – U.S. retail and food-service sales last month fell 1.8 percent compared with October, extending the current retail slump to a record five consecutive months, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Census Bureau reported today.
That decline – to $355.7 billion in total November sales – followed month-over-month drops of 2.9 percent in October, 1.3 percent in September, 0.4 percent in August and 0.1 percent in July. It is the longest such downward trend since the retail-sales data series began in 1992.
Analysts had expected sales would fall 2 percent in November – after plunging a record 2.8 percent the month before, based on the government’s original report last month (READ MORE) – according to the median forecast from a survey of 73 economists by Bloomberg News. (Their November estimates called for month-over-month sales declines of 0.7 percent to 4 percent.)
Total sales excluding motor vehicle and parts dealers fell 1.6 percent, slowing from October’s 2.4-percent decline. And retail trade sales fell 2.0 percent month-over-month, after falling 3.2 percent the month before, although sales excluding gasoline fell only 0.2 percent.
Gas station sales fell 14.7 percent, accelerating from October’s 12.9-percent drop, as gasoline prices plunged a record $1 per gallon at pumps nationwide. Sales at motor vehicle and part dealers fell 2.8 percent, slowing from October’s 5.5-percent decline. And miscellaneous store retailers saw sales fall 1.3 percent last month.
But month-over-month gains were seen by retailers including electronics and appliance stores (+2.8 percent); sporting goods, hobby, book and music stores (also +2.8 percent); and department stores (+2.1 percent); and food and beverage stores (+0.3 percent), the Census Bureau said. Food-service sales also rose, gaining 0.2 percent last month after dipping 0.4 percent the month before.
Cheaper gasoline “freed up a lot of money to be spent elsewhere,” Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, N.C., told Bloomberg News. “That discounting that we’ve seen at the department stores appears to have worked, it’s bringing people in,” Vitner said, adding: “It’s a surprisingly good report today for retail sales, but it flies in the face of what the retailers are telling us.”
Compared with November 2007 – when gas station sales were trending sharply upward (READ MORE) – total retail and food service sales fell 7.4 percent, the Census Bureau said. In other year-over-year changes, food-service sales rose 2.8 percent, but retail trade sales fell 8.5 percent, department store sales fell 4.6 percent, gas station sales fell 22.0 percent and sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers fell 25.2 percent.
Additional information, including the full Advance Monthly Sales for Retail Trade and Food Services report, is available from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Census Bureau at www.census.gov/retail.
