USA
Furniture and home furnishings sales grew modestly in April, reflecting the overall retail picture according to advance estimates from the Department of Commerce. But even with slow growth, those numbers remain ahead of 2021’s pace.
For the month, furniture and home furnishings stores recorded an adjusted USD12.173 billion in sales, up 0.7% from March’s USD12.094 billion. That figure is also 0.8% ahead of April 2021’s USD12.072 billion.
The overall retail and food services sector posted USD677.711 billion in April, up 0.9% from March’s USD671.648 billion. However, where furniture and home furnishings sales were up only slightly year-over-year, the overall retail picture is well ahead of 2021’s pace, posting an 8.2% gain from USD626.430 billion last year.
Categories that outpaced the overall snapshot in April included miscellaneous store retailers (up 4%), motor vehicle and parts dealers (up 2.2%), non-store retailers (2.1%), food services and drinking places (2%) and electronics and appliance stores (1%). Meanwhile, gas stations took the biggest hit (down 2.7%), while sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores (down 0.5%), food and beverage stores (down 0.2%) and building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers (down 0.1%) also showed declines.
The DOC’s advance estimates are based on a sub-sample of the U.S. Census Bureau’s full retail and food services sample. A stratified random sampling method is used to select approximately 5,500 retail and food services firms whose sales are then weighted and benchmarked to represent the complete universe of more than 3 million retail and food services firms.
(Furniture Today)
