Monthly Retail Trade Survey: Shoe Stores, 1992-2014

Apparel Search has utilized data from the USA Census to create the following historical information to help fashion industry researchers learn more about our industry.  The data was retrieved on February 4, 2015. 

Revisions to the original source data may occur, but we will NOT be updating the charts listed on this page.  If you wish to utilize this information, it is important to keep in mind that the data can possibly be outdated due to potential revisions. 

For the Monthly Retail Trade Survey, all current month estimates are preliminary estimates, which will be superseded in following months by revised estimates.

For information on the reliability and use of the data, including important notes on estimation and sampling variance, seasonal adjustment, measures of sampling variability, and other information pertinent to this economic indicator, go to the Monthly and Annual Retail Trade website, which provides time-series Excel files for Sales [XLS, 184kb], and Inventories and Inventories/sales Ratios [XLS, 368kb] data.

Estimated measures of sampling variability for totals are expressed as coefficients of variation (CV). Standard errors (SE) are provided for month-to-month change and ratio estimates.

Estimated measures of sampling variability are based on data not adjusted for seasonal variation, and should be used when drawing inferences about both adjusted and not adjusted estimates.

Inventories are only available for the following industries (defined in Box 3 above): 44000, 4400A, 441, 4423X, 444, 445, 448, 452, 4521.

NA = Not available.

(S) = Suppressed.

The Y-axis for the line charts may be truncated to prevent flattening of the lines or to present the complete range of data.

Retail Definitions

You can learn more at census.gov

Apparel Search will not be offering support regarding how to utilize the information outlined above.

Again, future updates to the original data may take place from the government resources that supplied the original statistics.  We will NOT be updating the charts and figures on this page.  You can use this for historical reference only based on the date we retrieved the statistical data for these reports.

How the Monthly Retail Trade Survey Figures Work

All current-month estimates in the Monthly Retail Trade Survey are preliminary estimates, superseded in following months by revised estimates. The Bureau's documentation on reliability and use — estimation and sampling variance, seasonal adjustment and measures of sampling variability — accompanies the series, with time-series files for sales and for inventories and inventories/sales ratios published alongside. Estimated measures of sampling variability are expressed as coefficients of variation (CV), with standard errors (SE) provided for month-to-month change and ratio estimates, and those measures are based on data not adjusted for seasonal variation even when used to draw inferences about adjusted estimates. Inventories are available only for specified industries in the survey, and the tables use NA for not available and (S) for suppressed. The line charts' Y-axes may be truncated to prevent flattening of the lines or to present the complete range of data.

Reading the Shoe Stores Series

Shoe stores sit between necessity and fashion, and the series shows it: the adjusted line tends to move with consumer spending generally, while the unadjusted line keeps footwear's own calendar, including the late-summer back-to-school surge that has no equivalent in the jewelry or menswear breakouts. For researchers comparing categories across the 1992-2014 collection, footwear is the useful control — a category where fit keeps the physical store central, tracked through the same survey, definitions and revision discipline as the clothing lines beside it. The retail definitions page explains the survey vocabulary, and the clothing stores series provides the aggregate this breakout feeds into.