Washington – In the Commerce Department’s preliminary monthly report for July, the gap in sales at furniture and home furnishings stores continued to narrow compared to the previous year.

For the month, the category reported adjusted revenue of $11.11 billion, down 2.4% from $11.39 billion in July 2023, but up half a percentage point from revised adjusted revenue of $11.05 billion in June.

For the year, the category posted sales of $79.45 billion, down 6.2% from the previous year, but the sales deficit has been reduced by 0.8% since last month’s report was released.

Retail sales for the full month of July totaled an adjusted $709.67 billion, up 2.7% from the year-ago figure of $691.25 billion, and up 1% from June (adjusted $702.86 billion).

Furniture and furnishings, while down year-on-year, did not experience the largest year-on-year decline. This affected sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores, which saw a 6.8% decline. Notably for the furniture category, the building materials and garden equipment and supplies category saw a 0.4% year-on-year increase in sales.

The DOC’s preliminary estimates are based on a subsample of the U.S. Census Bureau’s full retail and food service sample. A stratified random sampling method is used to select approximately 5,500 retail and food service establishments, whose sales are then weighted and compared to represent the entire universe of more than 3 million retail and food service establishments.

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