US retail sales rise in line with expectations
By Sean Farrell
Date: Monday 16 Jul 2018
(Sharecast News) - US retail sales increased as expected in June, marking five months of rising sales as the estimate for May was revised up.
Retail and food services sales rose 0.5% to $506.8bn from a month earlier - an increase that matched the average forecast from economists. The percentage gain for May was revised up to 1.3% from an earlier estimate of 0.8%.
Compared with June 2017 sales rose 6.6%, the US Census Bureau said.
Excluding the automotive industry, retail sales were up 0.4%, also as expected. Month-on-month sales rose 1% at motor vehicle dealerships and 1.5% at food services and drinking places.
Control group sales, which exclude car sales, food services, building materials and petrol stations, were unchanged after rising the previous month. Economists had on average expected control group sales to rise 0.4% in June.
Sales fell 2.5% at clothes stores, 1.8% at department stores and 3.2% at stores catering for sports, books and other hobbies. But Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said sales appeared buoyant and would feed through to wider economic figures.
"A hefty 0.5% upward revision to May sales should mitigate the disappointment over the soft June control number," Shepherdson said. "Expect to see GDP tracking models revised up after these numbers, which suggest that Q2 consumption rose at a 3%-plus annualised rate."
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