Retail Sales MoM

Retail Sales MoM is the monthly change in the EU volume of retail trade, turnover with price changes removed to show goods sold. Eurostat, the EU statistical office, builds it for NACE Rev 2 Division 47 as the EU retail classification across 27 EU members. It is an index with base value 100 where the average of 12 months equals 100 plus monthly growth rates. It is a key short-term gauge of retail activity and final domestic demand, separate from the euro-area aggregate and nominal sales.

Eurostat issues a monthly Euro-indicators release for the euro area and the EU in the weeks after the reference month. National institutes collect calendar-month turnover and transmit food, non-food and total indices 1 month after month-end, while Eurostat compiles the EU aggregate. Each release shows euro-area and EU headlines, a Member State table, food, non-food and fuel splits, plus methods and database updates in sts_trtu_m.

Eurostat revises prior months every release, recalculates quarterly and annual indices when monthly data change, corrects errors at once and estimates missing country data. The EU aggregate is published only when available country data cover at least 60% of weights.

Retail volume follows household buying of goods, so 3 product groups drive the headline.

• Food, drinks and tobacco: everyday groceries, the least cyclical group that reacts less to shocks.
• Non-food products except automotive fuel: durables and other goods, including mail orders and internet sales.
• Automotive fuel in specialised stores: filling-station fuel, the most volatile group that often moves against the headline.

For example, seasonally adjusted EU retail volume fell 2.6% on the month after a 1.2% rise. Food fell 2.9% and non-food fell 2.8%, while automotive fuel grew 2.3%, moving against the headline. On the year on calendar-adjusted data, EU volume fell 2.5%, with food down 6.6%, non-food down 0.9% and fuel up 7.3%.

The annual average rose 1.1%. A monthly reading was revised from 0.9% to 1.2%, showing initial prints often change.

1. Turnover: Each national institute builds a turnover index from invoiced retail sales, including charges like packaging but excluding VAT. Turnover means total invoiced sales in the month.
2. Deflation to volume: Eurostat divides the turnover index by a sales-price deflator to remove price changes. For example, turnover 112.0 divided by deflator 108.0 gives volume 103.7.
3. Re-referencing: Series are rescaled so the average of 12 months equals 100. Base value 100 means that average is the reference.
4. Activity aggregation: Lower-level indices combine into higher indices by weighting each by its turnover weight and summing. Formula: higher index equals sum of weight times index.
5. EU aggregation: The EU index is the weighted sum of national volume indices using turnover weights that sum to 1. For example, 0.6 x 103.7 plus 0.4 x 101.0 equals 102.62.
6. Adjustment: Calendar adjustment happens by country, then seasonally adjusted country data aggregate into EU totals using indirect aggregation. Eurostat uses TRAMO/SEATS software in JDemetra+ for countries that do not adjust themselves.
7. Growth rates: Month-on-month uses seasonally adjusted data; year-on-year uses calendar-adjusted data. For example, 102.62 versus 102.10 gives 0.5% on the month, and 102.62 versus 100.60 gives 2.0% on the year.