Building material dealers take the monthly sales cake
Despite a 0.1% decline in national retail sales, LBM dealers and hardware stores beat the odds as the fastest-growing category in February.
Building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers were up 1.6% from January and 12.2% from February 2015, raking in $29.9 billion on an adjusted basis.
The advance estimate of U.S. retail and food services sales (adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences) was $447.3 billion, down 0.1% month-over-month and up 3.1% from February 2015.
Retail trade sales were down 0.3% from January, and up 2.7% from last year.
The only other retail categories that reported month-to-month progress in February were health and personal care stores (up 0.7%), clothing and clothing accessory stores (up 0.9%), food services & drinking places (up 1.0%), and sporting goods, hobby, book & music stores (up 1.2%).
Gasoline stations continued to bring up the rear, down 15.6% from last year and 4.4% for the month.