Advance Retail Sales, Through August-2026

It's been awhile since I last published retail sales, but I never stopped tracking...

As always, the orange dots indicate inflation adjusted and the blue dots are nominal retail sales. 

While the numbers might seem impressive, the inflation adjusted sales for March, 2021 were $589.455B, compared to August 2026 of $597.656B. So the actual quantity of goods has not changed much in over 5 years. It did bottom in April, 2024 at an inflation adjusted $567,273. The latter being a rate of about +2.1% annual growth. Not so bad. 

For more in depth... the Retail Sales Report.

Advance Retail Sales

The numbers came out today... https://tinyurl.com/2tjb5w36

Automotive and Home Improvement stores were almost the entirety of the slippage. 

It does indicate some slippage in inflation adjusted, but still within the range from March, 2021... to present. Very near the median and average for that period of time. 

Of course, the impact of tariffs cannot be ascertained by this report. On the surface... what the impact is, the economy is adjusting, or so it seems.