This is the unedited transcript of the press release from the U.S. Census Bureau.


ADVANCE MONTHLY SALES FOR RETAIL TRADE AND FOOD SERVICES

OCTOBER 2005

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for October, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $351.6 billion, a decrease of 0.1 percent (±0.7%)* from the previous month, but up 5.7 percent (±0.5%) from October 2004. Total sales for the August through October 2005 period were up 6.8 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The August to September 2005 percent change was revised from +0.2 percent (±0.7%)* to +0.3 percent (±0.2%).
Retail trade sales were down 0.2 percent (±0.8%)* from September, but were up 5.5 percent (±0.8%) above last year. Gasoline station sales were up 27.1 percent (±3.3%) from October 2004 and sales of building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers were up 13.1 percent (±2.0%) from last year.

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 5,000 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. Responding firms account for approximately 65% of the MARTS dollar volume estimate. For an explanation of the measures of sampling variability included in this report, please see the Reliability of Estimates section on the last page of this publication.


Available at: http://www.census.gov/svsd/www/fullpub.html