April Retail Sales Rebound

The Census Bureau’s Advance Retail Sales Report released this morning shows that the seasonally adjusted sales series rebounded in April from its recent weakness. Headline sales came in at 1.3% month-over-month, which was above the 0.8% increase forecast by Investing.com. It is the strongest MoM since the 1.6% gain in March of last year. Headline sales are up 3.0% year-over-year. Core Retail Sales (ex Autos) were also strong at 0.8% MoM, also above the Investing.com forecast of a 0.5% increase. The previous MoM was revised upward for both series: -0.4% to -03% for Headline sales and 0.2% to 0.4% for Core.

Here is the introduction from today’s report:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for April, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $453.4 billion, an increase of 1.3 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month, and 3.0 percent (±0.7%) above April 2015. Total sales for the February 2016 through April 2016 period were up 2.8 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The February 2016 to March 2016 percent change was revised from down 0.4 percent (±0.5%)* to down 0.3 percent (±0.2%).

Retail trade sales were up 1.4 percent (±0.5%) from March 2016, and up 2.7 percent (±0.5%) from last year. Nonstore retailers were up 10.2 percent (±1.2%) from April 2015, while gasoline stations were down 9.4 percent (±1.6%) from last year. [view full report]

The chart below is a log-scale snapshot of retail sales since the early 1990s. The two exponential regressions through the data help us to evaluate the long-term trend of this key economic indicator.