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U.S. Census Bureau Launches New Experimental Data Product: Interactive Monthly State Retail Sales
The U.S. Census Bureau is launching a new experimental data product featuring modeled state-level retail sales. The Monthly State Retail Sales (MSRS) report features interactive state-level data visualizations that combine data from Monthly Retail Trade Survey data, administrative data, and third-party data. The first month’s data is below. Data will continue to be published monthly on an ongoing basis. Within the report, year-over-year percent changes are available for total retail sales excluding non-store retailers as well as 11 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) retail subsectors. These monthly data are detailed by state and NAICS codes from January 2019 to June 2020.
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    These state-level retail sales data are often requested by our data users. Advances in both statistical modeling software and access to selected third-party data allow us to produce and release these data as experimental.
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As with some of our other Experimental Data Products such as the weekly Business Formation Statistics (BFS) series and the Small Business Pulse Survey, the MSRS represents a step toward providing more timely, granular, and relevant data products that meet data user needs, while minimizing the burden on respondents. The MSRS is one of our first efforts to develop a model that blends our traditional survey data with administrative data and third-party data sources, while producing a new data product measuring our rapidly evolving economy. Similar to the Supplemental Quarterly E-Commerce Table first introduced last year, these enhancements provide additional geographic or industry granularity to supplement our main products. More timely data products, like these experimental statistics, are proving to be extremely valuable to our data users and can provide important additional insight on the state of the economy.
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About Monthly State Retail Sales
This MSRS release is the first version of these experimental data. The Census Bureau plans to continually refine the series and invites users to provide feedback on how to improve this experimental product. Feedback can be shared by email at EID.Monthly.State.Retail@census.gov.
Learn more about this new survey and other experimental data products.
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