AUGUST KEY FIGURES

		Aug 08	Jul 08 to Aug 08	Aug 07 to Aug 08
		$m	% change	% change
Turnover at current prices
	Trend estimates	18 378.3	0.3	3.2

Monthly turnover, Trend estimates - % change

AUGUST KEY POINTS

• The trend estimate of turnover for the Australian Retail series increased by 0.3% in August 2008. This follows a revised increase of 0.3% for each of the last two months.
• In August 2008, all industries except Other retailing (-0.3%) had an increase in the trend. Industries with the largest increase in the trend were Food retailing, Clothing and soft good retailing and Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services (all +0.5%).
• All States, except New South Wales (0.0%) and the Australian Capital Territory (-0.9%), had an increase in the trend estimate. States with the largest increase in the trend estimate were Queensland, Tasmania (both +0.9%) and South Australia (+0.7%).
• The trend estimate for the Australian retail series increased by 3.2% in August 2008 compared with August 2007.
• The trend estimate for Chains and other large retailers (which are completely enumerated) increased by 0.3% in August 2008 compared to July 2008 and 5.0% in August 2008 compared to August 2007.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
September 2008	3 November 2008
October 2008	2 December 2008
November 2008	7 January 2009
December 2008	4 February 2009
January 2009	3 March 2009
February 2009	1 April 2009

CHANGES TO MONTHLY RETAIL TRADE STATISTICS FROM JULY 2008

Please refer to the Feature Article: Changes to monthly Retail trade statistics in the July 2008 issue.


REVISIONS

There have been revisions to all original series, except for Department stores, for July 2008. These revisions will impact the seasonally adjusted and trend estimates. These revisions are result of corrections to imputation for non-responding providers for July 2008.


TIME SERIES DATA

The following trend, seasonally adjusted and original series are available from the Downloads tab of this issue:

• Retail turnover by state
• Retail turnover by industry
• Retail turnover completely enumerated sector, total level.

Also available are standard errors by state and industry.


INTERPRETING MONTHLY MOVEMENTS

Due to the smaller sample size and new sampling methodology introduced from July 2008, there will be increased volatility in all series. The original and seasonally adjusted series will be most affected, and as a result, the original and seasonally adjusted series are considered of limited use for measuring month to month movements. The ABS recommends using the trend series for this analysis.


NEW QUARTERLY PUBLICATION

More detailed quarterly industry and state estimates will be available from Retail Trade Quarterly Indicators, Australia (cat. no. 8502.0). The first issue of this publication, September quarter 2008, is scheduled for release on 17 November 2008. An outline of the new publication and the shells for the spreadsheets will be available with the release of the September monthly publication on 3 November 2008.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070 or Neil Hamilton on Canberra (02) 6252 5990.