Washington, DC…The U.S. Census Bureau announced the following advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for September 2020: Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for September 2020, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $549.3 billion, an increase of 1.9 percent (± 0.5 percent) from the previous month, and 5.4 percent (± 0.7 percent) above September 2019. Total sales for the July 2020 through September 2020 period were up 3.6 percent (± 0.5 percent) from the same period a year ago. The July 2020 to August 2020 percent change was unrevised at up 0.6 percent (± 0.2 percent). Retail trade sales were up 1.9 percent (± 0.5 percent) from August 2020, and 8.2 percent (± 0.7 percent) above last year. Nonstore retailers were up 23.8 percent (± 1.6 percent) from September 2019, while building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers were up 19.1 percent (± 2.1 percent) from last year.

General Information
The October 2020 Advance Monthly Retail report is scheduled for release on November 17, 2020 at 8:30 a.m. EST. View the full schedule in the Economic Briefing Room: . The full text and tables of this release can be found at .

EXPLANATORY NOTES
The advance estimates are based on a subsample of the 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 over three million retail and food services firms.

Survey Description
The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the Advance Monthly Retail Trade and Food Services Survey to provide an early estimate of monthly sales by kind of business for retail and food service firms located in the United States. Each month, questionnaires are mailed to a probability sample of approximately 5,500 employer firms selected from the larger Monthly Retail Trade Survey. Advance sales estimates are computed using a link relative estimator. For each detailed industry, we compute a ratio of current-toprevious month weighted sales using data from units for which we have obtained usable responses for both the current and previous month. For each detailed industry, the advance total sales estimates for the current month is computed by multiplying this ratio by the preliminary sales estimate for the previous month (derived from the larger MRTS) at the appropriate industry level. Total estimates for broader industries are computed as the sum of the detailed industry estimates. The link relative estimate is used because imputation is not performed for most nonrespondents in MARTS. For a limited number of nonresponding companies that have influential effects on the estimates, sales may be estimated based on historical performance of that company. The monthly estimates are benchmarked to the annual survey estimates from the Annual Retail Trade Survey once available. The estimates are adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading day differences. Additional information on MARTS and MRTS can be found on the Census Bureau website at: .

Source = US Census Bureau