May retail sales show modest growth over prior year
Posted By:
Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:
Sunday, July 10, 2011
12:55 PM
Seasonally adjusted real retail sales decreased slightly in May to $172.2 billion from $172.9 billion in April. (Note that actual sales are deflated using CPI 1982-84=100.) Year-over-year growth was 4.2%. The last three months have all seen less than 5% year-over-year growth. From peak (Sep '07) to current, retail sales are only off 4.5%, a much smaller percentage decline than what has occurred in the housing and auto markets. May sales were 10.0% higher than the trough (Mar '09) of the recent recession. The vertical bars in the graph represent recessions.
