Retail Sales MoM

Retail Sales MoM measures the monthly change in Canadian retail sales from Statistics Canada's Monthly Retail Trade Survey, survey number 2406. It covers retail establishments in codes 441100 to 459999, using about 10,000 establishment clusters. Sales mean goods bought for resale, net of returns and discounts, plus small service receipts, reported seasonally adjusted in current dollars. It does not cover all consumer spending, since travel bookings and financial transactions are excluded, nor wholesale activity, while inflation adjusted volume is shown separately.

Collection starts about 7 working days after the reference month ends, by questionnaire, phone follow up and tax data. Results appear in The Daily at 8:30 a.m. Eastern about 7 weeks after month end, plus an advance about 21 to 25 days after it. Each release shows seasonally adjusted current dollar totals, monthly and yearly changes, core sales, volume, provincial detail, e-commerce share and charts. Raw data revise the prior month monthly, adjusted data revise 3 months each release, yearly data revise each February, and advances are always revised.

9 subsectors drive the total; core sales exclude motor vehicle and parts dealers and gasoline stations and fuel vendors.

• Motor vehicle and parts dealers: new and used cars, other motor vehicles, parts and tires; largest and most volatile group.
• Gasoline stations and fuel vendors: fuel sales where dollar value and sales volume often move differently with prices.
• Food and beverage retailers: supermarkets, convenience stores, specialty food, beer, wine and liquor stores.
• Home goods retailers: building material and garden supplies plus furniture, furnishings, electronics and appliances.
• General merchandise and health retailers: broad mix and department stores plus pharmacies and personal care stores.
• Apparel and leisure retailers: clothing, shoes, jewellery and luggage plus sporting goods, hobby, books, miscellaneous and cannabis stores, with cannabis shown unadjusted.

In the January 2024 release, published March 22, 2024, sales fell 0.3% to $67.0 billion, led by motor vehicle and parts dealers at 2.4%. Sales fell in 3 of 9 subsectors, while core sales rose 0.4% on sporting stores at 3.0% and building material at 2.2%. Volume rose 0.2% in 2017 dollars, while gasoline rose 0.9% in dollars but 3.8% in volume, showing prices masked quantities. British Columbia fell 2.2%, Ontario rose 0.5%, e-commerce hit 5.7% of sales, and the February 2024 advance pointed to a 0.1% gain.

1. Frame and stratify: build the retail universe from the business register and draw about 10,000 clusters by industry, region and size.
2. Collect: gather sales, online sales and store counts from about 7 working days after month end, and model the smallest firms from tax data.
3. Edit: check responses against the prior month and the same month last year, and flag outliers without changing reported values.
4. Impute missing values: fill gaps using past responses first, then models using the prior month and year earlier data, then tax data.
5. Estimate levels: weight responses by inverse selection chance, calibrated to known tax totals, then sum by industry and region plus modelled small firms.
6. Adjust for seasonality: apply X-12-ARIMA, a standard seasonal filter, then force yearly adjusted totals to match raw totals.
7. Headline change: compute month over month growth as 100 times the sales difference divided by prior sales. Illustrative example: $67.0B versus $67.5B gives negative 0.7%.
8. Volume: divide dollar sales by a store type price index and sum across types. Illustrative example: $67.0B divided by 1.152 equals $58.2B in 2017 dollars.