The U.S. Census Bureau announced that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for July, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $384.6 billion, a decrease of 0.1 percent from the previous month and 2.6 percent above July 2007. Total sales for the May through July 2008 period were up 2.7 percent from the same period a year ago. The May to June 2008 percent change was revised from +0.1 percent to +0.3 percent.
Retail trade sales were down 0.1 percent from June 2008, but were 2.6 percent above last year. Gasoline station sales were up 24.6 percent from July 2007 and sales of non-store retailers were up 7.7 percent from last year.
