Retail flat again (far out!) Pete Wargent

Seasonal adjustments for department store sales have delivered a bit of a wild ride in recent years, and this month's Retail Trade figures recorded a monster -6.2 percent decline for the sector in July.
It's not the first time we've seen a 'far out' reading for department store retail (last time the figures snapped back the following month) - but we'll have to wait until next month to see whether that happens again.
In any event, this contributed a flat result in seasonally adjusted terms, for just a +0.1 percent increase in trend terms.
Excluding the department stores reading retail turnover would have been up by +0.4 percent for the month, so we'll have to wait and see what next month brings.


State versus state

This month's surprise negative result knocked the quarterly and annual figures for NSW and Victoria quite hard.

Department stores crunched
Leaving aside the department stores outlier, it's become clear that the household goods boom that piggy-backed off rising house prices as now ended.


The best performing sector of the year has been clothing and footwear.
PETE WARGENT is the co-founder of AllenWargent property buyers (London, Sydney) and a best-selling author and blogger.
His latest book is Four Green Houses and a Red Hotel.
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