Monthly sales report: It’s mixed
Tuesday morning’s monthly retail-sales-data big reveal showed sales for building material and garden equipment and suppliers dealers – NAICS 444 – amounted to an estimated $42.308 billion on an unadjusted basis.
That’s down from both June 2023 and July 2022.
But when you look at the adjusted numbers, a small victory is revealed: The broad category of home centers, hardware stores and building supply dealers increased 0.7 percent on an adjusted basis, compared to the previous month.
Meanwhile, the latest data for hardware stores (classified as NAICS 44413) covers the month of June.
On an unadjusted based June sales for NAICS 44413 were $3.80 billion, up from $3.61 billion in June 2022, but down from $3.90 billion from May 2023.
The statistics were released by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Monthly Retail Trade report.
Overall numbers
Across the entire U.S. retail landscape, retail trade sales were up 0.6 percent from June 2023, and up 2.0 percent above last year.
Nonstore retailers (think e-commerce) were up 10.3 percent from last year, while food services and drinking places were up 11.9 percent from July 2022.
