Census puts August retail sales at $773.9bn, up 1.2%
The Census Bureau's advance estimate, released 16 September, carries a margin of 0.4 points on the monthly change and no jewellery line. Sales were 6.0% above August 2025.
By The Retail Desk
What changed
The release carries no jewellery. The Census Bureau's advance estimate puts August retail and food services sales at $773.9 billion, up 1.2% on July. It publishes no separate line for jewellery stores.
What it means
- If you benchmark your own August: The national number is $773.9 billion and 6.0% above a year ago, with no jewellery cut inside it.
- If you read the monthly print: 1.2% carries a 0.4-point margin, which puts the true change between 0.8% and 1.6%.
- What this is not: A jewellery figure. Nothing in this release measures the jewellery trade.
Key figures
| US retail and food services sales, August 2026 | $773.9bn |
|---|---|
| On July 2026margin 0.4 points | +1.2% |
| On August 2025margin 0.5 points | +6.0% |
| Jewellery lines in the release | 0 |
Source: US Census Bureau advance estimate CB26-153, released 16 September 2026, covering August 2026 · seasonally adjusted, not adjusted for price changes
The margin is worth reading
The band matters. The monthly change carries a margin of 0.4 points, so the released range runs from 0.8% to 1.6%.
The annual band widens. The 6.0% year-on-year change carries 0.5 points either side, a range of 5.5% to 6.5%.
A revision landed. The same release revised the June-to-July change from down 0.6%, margin 0.4 points, to down 0.5% with a margin of 0.2.
| Measure | Value | Margin | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 sales | $773.9bn | — | — |
| Change on July 2026 | +1.2% | 0.4 points | 0.8% to 1.6% |
| Change on August 2025 | +6.0% | 0.5 points | 5.5% to 6.5% |
| June–August on a year earlier | +6.0% | 0.5 points | 5.5% to 6.5% |
| June-to-July change, as revised | −0.5% | 0.2 points | −0.3% to −0.7% |
Notes on this table
The Bureau's own margins. every figure in the third column is published by Census beside its estimate and is not Carat Capital's construction. The fourth column is the simple addition and subtraction of the margin from the estimate, printed so it can be checked: 1.2 ± 0.4 gives 0.8 to 1.6; 6.0 ± 0.5 gives 5.5 to 6.5; −0.5 ± 0.2 gives −0.3 to −0.7.
The revision. the June-to-July change was first published as down 0.6% with a 0.4-point margin and is revised in this release to down 0.5% with a 0.2-point margin, so both the estimate and its uncertainty moved.
Basis. figures are adjusted for seasonal variation and for holiday and trading-day differences, and are not adjusted for price changes, which the Bureau states on the release itself.
No jewellery row exists. because the advance report publishes none.
No jewellery line is published
The advance stops short. The advance estimate reports broad categories and carries no jewellery-store line. The Census series that separates jewellery is not part of this release.
A key is required. Census's own time-series interface returned a missing-key page on a direct request for the jewellery category, so no jewellery figure is printed here.
The release is dated 16 September
The release dates itself. The Census Bureau published this estimate on 16 September under CB26-153. A trade write-up dated 22 September is where the figure reached the jewellery press.
What to watch
- 16 October 2026The Census Bureau's next advance monthly retail estimate, covering September 2026, on its published monthly rhythm.
- With that releaseThe revision to August's own 1.2%, which the next advance report restates.
The story so far
Go deeper
Corrections
Updated 21 October 2026: the Census Bureau's annual revision of 28 September 2026 restated August retail sales at $739.3 billion, against the $773.9 billion advance estimate this article reported. The advance figure was right as published on 24 September. The revised level and September's estimate are in census-puts-september-retail-at-seven-forty-five.html (19 October 2026).
What would change this call
A jewellery cut. Everything said here about the trade is an absence rather than a finding, and a Census series that separates jewellery stores would replace it with a number. The national figures themselves would be unaffected: they are the Bureau's own and are dated.
An advance estimate is a first draft
The advance monthly report is published about two weeks after the month closes, from a smaller sample than the full monthly retail survey that follows it, which is why the Bureau attaches a margin to every change it prints and revises the prior month in each new release. The margin is a sampling band, not a forecast error: a 1.2% change with a 0.4-point margin means the Bureau's own estimate of the true change runs from 0.8% to 1.6%. Reading the point estimate alone, without the band, treats a range as a number, and the revision printed in this same release from down 0.6% to down 0.5% is what that looks like when it resolves.
Method
The Census Bureau's own release page was fetched directly, 121,613 bytes, and every figure was read out of the served bytes rather than from a secondary account. Its own text carries 'FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, September 16, 2026', the release number CB26-153, and the sentence beginning 'Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August 2026' with $773.9 billion, 1.2 percent with a 0.4 percent margin, 6.0 percent with a 0.5 percent margin, and the June-through-August comparison. The revision sentence was read in full from that same page rather than quoted from a truncated view, and it reads that the June-to-July change was revised from down 0.6 percent, margin 0.4, to down 0.5 percent, margin 0.2. The page was then searched for a jewellery line: 'jewelry' and 'Jewelry' each return nothing in its text, which is the basis for the zero cell and for the sentence saying so. An attempt was made to reach the jewellery category directly through the Census time-series API for NAICS 4483; that request redirected to a missing-key page, so the attempt is reported as it ended and no jewellery figure was constructed. On the dateline, the trade write-up that surfaced this figure carries datePublished 2026-09-22T15:35:21Z and says the Bureau released the data 'last week'; the date printed throughout this article is the Bureau's own release date of 16 September, not the write-up's, because the release body is the event. That makes the figure eight days old at filing, which is why it is filed low and not led on. The archive was searched by figure and by entity before filing: '773.9' returns nothing. The same trade write-up carries a set of National Retail Federation container-import forecasts; the NRF's own pages were tried at two addresses and both returned 404, so no figure from that forecast is printed here.
Sources
- Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, CB26-153, US Census Bureau 16 September 2026
- US Retail Sales Rise in August, Rapaport, Suzanne Watkin 22 September 2026