About this indicator
About
Retail sales is the dollar value of merchandise sold by U.S. retail and food-service businesses, published monthly by the Census Bureau as the Monthly Retail Trade Survey. The advance estimate appears roughly two weeks after the reference month ends, with revised figures arriving the following month. The survey covers about 5,500 retail businesses, sampled to represent the universe of about 3 million retailers nationwide.
Why it matters
Consumer spending is about 70% of U.S. GDP, and retail sales is the highest-frequency look at it. The headline number drives the consumption component of nowcasting models like the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow. A surprise in the control group (retail sales excluding autos, gas, food services, and building materials) is what most economists actually watch, because it maps directly into the personal consumption expenditures category of national accounts.
How it's computed
Census collects sales totals from sampled retailers, then weights and seasonally adjusts the data. The control group strips out four volatile categories that don't map cleanly into the GDP consumption series. The series is reported in nominal dollars; analysts who want real retail sales divide by the corresponding CPI component themselves, since BEA doesn't publish a deflated headline.
Pitfalls
The advance estimate is the most-watched release but also the most revised. Holiday timing distortions (the position of Easter, the number of weekends in a month) regularly produce headline noise that the seasonal adjustment can't fully handle. E-commerce reporting was historically late and incomplete; Census now reports it separately, but cross-channel substitution still shows up in volatility. Reading the change in the control group rather than the headline avoids most of the false-signal risk during big-box sales cycles.