Furniture sees sharp: a concise orientation before we get practical.
Furniture sees sharp: Quick notes
WASHINGTON — While most categories measured by the Department of Commerce‘s advance monthly estimates were up in December, the furniture and home furnishings category fell furthest off the pace.
For the month, the category, which measures brick-and-mortar retail, recorded an estimated adjusted $11.056 billion, a slip of 5.6% compared with December 2024’s adjusted $11.717 billion and almost a full point down (-0.9%) compared with November’s preliminary adjusted $11.161 billion. It was the second month in a row of sagging year-over-year numbers.
While the year ended off the pace, furniture and home furnishings finished ahead of 2024 by 2.3% with an unadjusted estimate of $135.79 billion in sales.
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By contrast, the full retail snapshot showed adjusted estimated December sales of $734.97 billion, up 2.4% on December 2024’s $717.55 billion, and essentially flat when measured vs. November’s preliminary adjusted $735.09 billion.
Those gains were powered by numerous strong-performing categories. The miscellaneous store retailer category was up 9.4% while health and personal care stores (6.4%); sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores (6.0%); non-store (e-commerce) retailers (5.3%) and clothing and clothing and accessories stores (5.1%) all had year-over-year gains greater than five points.
Of interest to the furniture and home furnishings category, building material, garden equipment and supplies dealers were up 0.5% over December 2024 and 1.2% ahead of November.
The DOC‘s advance estimates are based on a sub-sample of the U.S. 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 more than 3 million retail and food services firms.
We reference Furniture sees sharp briefly to keep the thread coherent.
