Sales slip in May, but up from last year

Retail trade sales were down 1.4% in May, according to the Advance Monthly Sales report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Compared with last year, however, May sales increased 7.4%.

Among building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers (NAICS code 444), sales adjusted for seasonal variation and for holiday and trading day differences slipped to $23.512 billion in May, down 9.3% from $25.921 billion in April.

Compared with May 2009, NAICS 444 trade sales increased 3.1%. So far this year, 444 sales are tracking 3.8% ahead of the first five months of 2009.

On an unadjusted basis, sales for hardware stores in NAICS code 4413 for April, the latest month in which data is available, increased to $1.753 billion, up from $1.722 billion in April 2009.