The following is the unedited transcript of the news release from the U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce.


The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for January, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $382.9 billion, an increase of 0.3 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month and 3.9 percent (±0.7%) above January 2007.

Total sales for the November 2007 through January 2008 period were up 4.4 percent (±0.3%) from the same period a year ago. The November to December 2007 percent change was unrevised from -0.4 percent (±0.4%)*.


Retail trade sales were up 0.4 percent (±0.7%)* from December 2007 and were 3.8 percent (±0.8%) above last year. Gasoline station sales were up 23.0 percent (±2.8%) from January 2007 and sales of nonstore retailers were up 10.6 percent (±2.0%) from last year.


Available at:

http://www.census.gov/svsd/www/marts_current.html