Retail Sales QoQ

Retail Sales QoQ is the percentage change from the previous quarter in Australia's retail turnover in seasonally adjusted volume terms. Its official title is "Retail Trade, Australia", published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics from the Retail Business Survey. Turnover covers shop and online sales plus wholesale, repairs, meals, hiring takings and agency commissions, including goods and services tax since July 2000.

It is not total household spending, as coverage fell from 56.2% of consumption in 1959-60 to 33.2% in 2022-23. It excludes businesses without employees, non-resident sellers, direct imports, household-to-household sales, personal services and travel. It includes cafes, restaurants and takeaway food although they belong to the accommodation and food services sector.

Businesses report calendar-month turnover, collected mainly by telephone with a few mailed questionnaires. Some smaller firms are replaced in the first month of each quarter, lifting volatility against the previous month. The Bureau releases results at 11:30am Canberra time, generally 22 working days after the reference period. Chain volumes appear only with the March, June, September and December issues, with monthly turnover by industry and state.

Original monthly estimates are never revised, while adjusted estimates are revised monthly on a concurrent basis. Revisions can grow with the annual reanalysis of seasonal factors, and trend revises over the last 6 months and last 3 quarters. Per capita estimates revise with each population revision, and the release also shows online turnover.

Movements combine 6 industry groups, with no fixed weights because annual reweighting shifts each share.

• Food retailing: captures household food shopping including supermarkets, liquor and specialised food stores.
• Household goods retailing: captures durables and home improvement including furniture, electronics, hardware, building and garden supplies.
• Clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing: captures apparel and personal goods including clothing, footwear, watches, jewellery and accessories.
• Department stores: captures broad-range turnover from the department-store class alone.
• Other retailing: captures the residual pool including books, recreational goods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and non-store and commission sales.
• Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services: captures food-services turnover including cafes, restaurants, catering and takeaway food.

In the June quarter 2019, released 2 August 2019, volumes rose 0.2% after a 0.1% fall in the March quarter 2019. Department stores led with 1.4%, with cafes and restaurants at 0.5%, clothing at 0.7%, other retailing at 0.4% and household goods at 0.1%. Food retailing, the largest everyday group, fell 0.4%, moving against the headline rise.

June turnover rose 0.4% in current-price terms, above the 0.2% volume gain. Online sales reached 6.1% of turnover, against 5.7% in June 2018.

1. Collection: gather calendar-month turnover from about 700 large firms fully counted each month and a sample of about 2,700 smaller firms. Benchmarks rest on annualised turnover and update each quarter.
2. Seasonal adjustment: adjust the national, state and industry series directly for Christmas, trading-day, Easter and Father's Day effects. Reconcile detail cells to the totals, using internal ARIMA projections then discarded.
3. Quarterly sum: add the 3 monthly seasonally adjusted turnovers into quarterly turnover at current prices. As a simple illustration, $35.0bn + $35.2bn + $35.3bn gives $105.5bn for the quarter.
4. Chain volume: value each year at previous-year prices, except the newest financial year at 2022-23 reference-year prices, then link yearly segments. Volume reflects quantity change only, and the reference year advances each September.
5. QoQ rate: compute QoQ as 100 times this quarter's volume minus last quarter's volume, divided by last quarter's volume. Through-year change compares with the same quarter a year earlier. In the illustration, $98.0bn versus $97.7bn gives about 0.3%, a 0.3% rise in volume terms.
6. Trend and per capita: smooth quarters with a 7-term Henderson average and months with 13 terms, using asymmetric end weights. The last 3 quarters revise as new data arrive.