A woman is shopping at the supermarket in Washington, USA
WASHINGTON (Archyde.com) – U.S. retail sales enjoyed an unexpected rebound in August as lower fuel prices appeared to benefit other categories, official statistics showed on Thursday.
The Commerce Department reported a 0.3% rise in sales from July as economists polled by Archyde.com on average forecast stagnation.
July sales, unchanged in the first estimate, show following revision a drop of 0.4%.
Excluding autos, fuels, building materials and food services, retail sales were flat last month. Those for July have been revised downwards and only show an increase of 0.3% once morest +0.8% in the first estimate.
This category is the closest to that used for the calculation of the consumption component in the gross domestic product (GDP) statistics.
(Report Lucia Mutikani; French version Marc Angrand and Claude Chendjou, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
