The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for April, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $372.0 billion, a decrease of 0.2 percent (±0.7%)* from the previous month, but up 3.2 percent (±0.7%) from April 2006. Total sales for the February through April 2007 period were up 3.7 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The February to March 2007 percent change was revised from 0.7 percent (± 0.7%)* to 1.0 percent (± 0.3%).
Retail trade sales were down 0.2 percent (±0.7%)* from March 2007, but were 3.0 percent (±0.8%) above last year. Nonstore retailers were up 9.3 percent (±4.5%) from April 2006 and sales of health and personal care stores were up 8.1 percent (±1.7%) from last year.
Bloomberg reported:
The report heightens concern that a pullback in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, will jeopardize the expansion. Federal Reserve policy makers, who this week maintained the economy would grow at a ``moderate'' pace and said inflation was their ``predominant'' concern, may now have more to worry about.
``Consumer spending could very well be slowing more than we expected,'' Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania, said before the report. ``Higher gasoline costs are reducing discretionary income for low and middle-income consumers.''
This confirms yesterday's news from various retailers.
Gas sales increased 1.74%. This increase was the report's highlight.
General Merchandise decreased 1.1%.
Auto sales decreased 1%.
Clothing sales decreased 2%.
Electronics increased .66%.
Simply put, this is a bad report.
However, the year over year comparison is still strong.
Retail sales are up 3.2% in the past 12 months. Excluding autos, sales are up 3.7%. The figures do not include price changes.
And previous numbers were revised higher.
In one bright spot, sales in March were revised higher. Retail sales increased a revised 1.0% in March, compared with the initial estimate of a 0.7% gain. Sales excluding autos were revised up 1.1%, compared with the previous estimate of a 0.8% increase.
This is only one month. While the losses retailers expressed yesterday were large and wide-spread, it was one month's worth of data. If and when we have several months of data that corroborate this information, then we'll have a trend.
