Washington The sales gap between the previous year and the current year in the Department of Commerce’s advance monthly estimates report for July kept narrowing for furniture and home furnishings stores.
Sales for the category came in at $11.11 billion for the month, which was up 0.5% from June’s revised adjusted $11.05 billion but down 2.4% from $11.39 billion in July 2023.
Sales for the category have totaled $79.45 billion for the year, 6.2% less than in 2023. Nonetheless, since the release of the report from last month, it has reduced the sales gap by 0.8%.
Retail sales for the month of July totaled an adjusted $709.67 billion, up 2.7% from $691.25 billion the previous year and up 1% from June’s revised adjusted $702.86 billion.
Even while the category of furniture and home furnishings fell short of 2023’s monthly average, the year-over-year decline was not as large. That belonged to the 6.8% decline in athletic goods, hobby, music instrument, and book stores. Interestingly, YOY sales of building materials and garden equipment and supplies sellers increased by 0.4% in the furniture category.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s complete retail and food services sample, on which the DOC’s preliminary estimates are based, is subsampled. Approximately 5,500 retail and food service companies are chosen using a stratified random sampling technique. Their revenues are then weighted and benchmarked to represent the entire universe of more than 3 million retail and food service companies.
