Nominal sales growth at 1.2% m/m exceeded consensus at 0.8%, while same store sales at 1.4% also exceeded consensus at 0.4%.  However, real sales — excluding gasoline station sales — while rising, were just below June levels.

Figure 1: Retail sales excluding gasoline station sales in mn$ (blue), in mn.2025$ (red), both s.a. Real deflated using core CPI. Source: Census, BLS, and author’s calculations.

I include total retail sales deflated by headline CPI in this graph of indicators.

Figure 2: Civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept smoothed population controls (bold orange), manufacturing production (red), ADP private nonfarm payroll employment (light green), Bloomberg consensus of 6/29 (light green +), real retail sales, CPI deflated (black), freight services indexes (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (blue bars), all log normalized to 2025M01=0. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED,  Philadelphia Fed, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Federal Reserve via FRED, BEA 2026Q1 3rd release, and author’s calculations.

Here, real retail sales (including gasoline station sales) have rebounded, back slightly above June levels.