OCTOBER KEY FIGURES

		Oct 08	Sep 08 to Oct 08	Oct 07 to Oct 08
		$m	% change	% change
Turnover at current prices
	Trend estimates	18 396.1	0.2	2.0

Monthly turnover, Trend estimates - % change

OCTOBER KEY POINTS

• The trend estimate of turnover for the Australian Retail series increased by 0.2% in October 2008. This follows an increase of 0.2% for each of the previous two months.
• In October 2008, Food retailing (+0.6%) and Other retailing (+0.8%) had an increase in the trend. Industries with a decrease in the trend were Clothing and soft good retailing (-0.2%), Household good retailing (-0.7%) and Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services (-0.6%). In October 2008, there was no change in trend estimate for Department stores.
• All States, except New South Wales (-0.2%), had an increase in the trend estimate. States with the largest increase in the trend estimate were the Northern Territory (+0.8%), South Australia (+0.5%) and Victoria, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory (all +0.4%).
• The trend estimate for the Australian retail series increased by 2.0% in October 2008 compared with October 2007.
• The trend estimate for Chains and other large retailers (which are completely enumerated) increased by 0.3% in October 2008 compared to September 2008 and 5.0% in October 2008 compared to October 2007.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
November 2008	7 January 2009
December 2008	4 February 2009
January 2009	3 March 2009
February 2009	1 April 2009
March 2009	6 May 2009
April 2009	1 June 2009

CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

For information on revisions to the completely enumerated sector component of the total estimate, see the Changes in this issue section.


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 (there are independent samples for each month of the quarter) introduced from July 2008, there is increased volatility in all series. The original and seasonally adjusted series are 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.


FORTHCOMING CHANGES

As announced by the Australian Statistician on Wednesday 4 November 2008, the full monthly Retail Trade sample will be reinstated. Data for the November 2008 month will be collected from the reinstated sample and the results included in the November 2008 issue of this publication. The format of this publication however, will not change until early 2009. Therefore, the November issue will continue to present data at the industry and state level only. The publication will only include trend estimates but seasonally adjusted estimates will be available from the ABS website.

With the reinstatement of the full monthly sample, the December quarter 2008 issue of Retail Trade Quarterly Indicators, Australia (cat. no. 8502.0) to be released on 18 February 2009 will be the final issue.


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.