The recovery in U.S. retail sales appears to have stalled. Panjiva's analysis of official data shows total retail sales rose just 0.1% year over year in August after a 3.5% rise in July. Excluding the volatile autos and fuel segments, there was a slowdown in growth to just 1.6% in August from 4.8% in July.

In percentage terms, the weakest performance came from clothing stores, which saw a 23.5% drop, likely due to ongoing poor demand as a result of continued stay-at-home policies for corporations and some schools, as discussed in Panjiva's Sep. 9 research. Sales by furniture and electrical stores rose just 0.4% and declined 3.4%, respectively, suggesting that consumer demand has yet to take off.

While nonstore retailers are expanding more rapidly, the furniture and electricals segments may face an emerging inventory problem. Panjiva's U.S. seaborne import data shows that shipments of furniture and household appliances rose 38.1% and 79.7% year over year, respectively, in August. Consumer electronics also continued to grow with an expansion of 15.3% year over year in August, reversing a prior downturn. Textiles and apparel remained in a downturn, with a 13.2% contraction.

The surge in furniture shipments to specialist stores has been led by a 41.9% rise in shipments linked to IKEA AB in August, which followed a 38.9% slump in July, Panjiva's data shows. Shipments handled by Target Corp.'s in-house customs operations also surged 33.6%, suggesting furniture sales via big-box retailers are also increasing. Not all suppliers are experiencing growth, however, with furniture shipments linked to Dorel Industries Inc. having declined by 7.8% in August.

Christopher Rogers is a senior researcher at Panjiva, which is a business line of S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global Inc. This content does not constitute investment advice, and the views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Links are current at the time of publication. S&P Global Market Intelligence is not responsible if those links are unavailable later.