Real Retail Sales in August
Nominal sales growth at 1.2% m/m exceeded consensus at 0.8%, while same store sales at 1.4% also exceeded consensus at 0.4%. However, real sales — excluding gasoline station sales — while rising, were just below June levels.
Figure 1: Retail sales excluding gasoline station sales in mn$ (blue), in mn.2025$ (red), both s.a. Real deflated using core CPI. Source: Census, BLS, and author’s calculations.
I include total retail sales deflated by headline CPI in this graph of indicators.
Figure 2: Civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept smoothed population controls (bold orange), manufacturing production (red), ADP private nonfarm payroll employment (light green), Bloomberg consensus of 6/29 (light green +), real retail sales, CPI deflated (black), freight services indexes (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (blue bars), all log normalized to 2025M01=0. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED, Philadelphia Fed , Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Federal Reserve via FRED, BEA 2026Q1 3rd release, and author’s calculations.
Here, real retail sales (including gasoline station sales) have rebounded, back slightly above June levels.