Retail Sales MoM

Retail Sales MoM is Switzerland's monthly change in retail trade turnover, published by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). It covers enterprises in NOGA 2008 Division 47, the official classification for retail trade, under the DHU survey. Results appear as indices with base 2015 = 100, in nominal terms (current prices) and real terms (price-adjusted volumes). It excludes wholesale trade, motor vehicle trade and services.

Large and medium retailers report monthly turnover, while small firms report monthly figures every quarter. Releases appear around the end of the next month, about 35 days after month-end, at 8:30 Swiss time. The release publishes nominal and real indices with calendar-adjusted year-on-year rates, corrected for working days and holidays, and seasonally adjusted month-on-month rates. Results stay provisional. Full detail plus first next-month estimates follow one month later. The central bank and SECO see data 5 working days early, and press agencies receive the release 15 minutes before publication.

MoM momentum reflects food stability against non-food swings, fuel volatility and channel shifts.

• Total retail trade: headline aggregate for NOGA Division 47, shown nominal and real, in YoY and MoM rates.
• Retail trade excluding service stations: core gauge stripping volatile fuel sales from the total.
• Food, drinks and tobacco: defensive staples that move least in shocks.
• Non-food sector: cyclical goods that swing hardest across cycles.
• Service stations: automotive fuel sales shown inside the total and via the gap to the excluding-service-stations total.
• Finer branches and size classes: portal-only unadjusted detail, not corrected for calendar or seasons, by goods type and firm size.

In a textbook post-lockdown rebound, real turnover rose 22.6% YoY calendar-adjusted and 22.1% MoM seasonally adjusted, with nominal gains of 21.5% and 21.9%. The jump came mostly from a depressed base when the pandemic first hit. Excluding service stations, nominal turnover rose 22.3% YoY and 23.5% in real terms. Food grew only 7.0% nominal and 8.5% real, while non-food surged 39.9% nominal and 41.1% real. Household equipment, textiles, DIY and furniture led with 88.5% nominal and 90.1% real, while mail order and internet trade grew 24.5% nominal and 25.1% real. The lesson holds: reopening spikes ride non-food, while food barely moves, and real trails nominal by inflation.

1. Collection: gather monthly turnover from a random sample of about 3000 retailers, with small firms filing monthly figures quarterly.
2. Indexing: express turnover as a nominal index with base 2015 = 100, dividing reference-month turnover by average 2015 turnover and multiplying by 100.
3. Deflation: divide the nominal index by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and multiply by 100 to get the real index.
4. Calendar adjustment: divide turnover by a regression-based calendar factor correcting for weekdays and holidays; end-of-year holiday factors can distort around Christmas.
5. Seasonal adjustment: remove regular seasonal swings with X12-ARIMA, recalculating the full series each release.
6. Rates: compute calendar-adjusted YoY change versus the same month of the previous year and seasonally adjusted MoM change versus the prior month. For example 10.50 over 10.00 is 5.0, and 100.0 times 1.050 is 105.0. Over CPI 103.0 the real index is 101.9, giving 2.9 YoY and 0.9 MoM; figures are illustrative only.