SEPTEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Sep 08	Aug 08 to Sep 08	Sep 07 to Sep 08
		$m	% change	% change
Turnover at current prices
	Trend estimates	18 351.9	0.2	2.3

Monthly turnover, Trend estimates - % change

SEPTEMBER KEY POINTS

• The trend estimate of turnover for the Australian Retail series increased by 0.2% in September 2008. This follows a revised increase of 0.2% for each of the last four months.
• In September 2008, four of the six industries had an increase in the trend. Food retailing (+0.6%) had the largest increase. Also increasing were Clothing and soft good retailing (+0.3%), Department stores and Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services (both +0.2%).
• All States, except New South Wales (-0.3%) had an increase in the trend estimate. The states with the largest increase in the trend estimate were the Northern Territory (+0.9%), South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory (both +0.6%).
• The trend estimate for the Australian retail series increased by 2.3% in September 2008 compared with September 2007.
• The trend estimate for Chains and other large retailers (which are completely enumerated) increased by 0.3% in September 2008 compared to August 2008 and 4.4% in September 2008 compared to September 2007.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
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
March 2009	6 May 2009

CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

There are no changes in this issue.


TIME SERIES DATA

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

• 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 sampling methodology (involving independent samples for each month of the quarter) introduced from July 2008, there is potentially 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.


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 time series spreadsheets can be found by accessing the Retail Trade Quarterly Indicators, Australia (cat. no. 8502.0) publication from the ABS website.

With the smaller sample size and sampling methodology introduced from July 2008, data quality assurance for the monthly series has focused on state and industry level estimates. With estimates now available for the three months to September, further quality assurance will be undertaken for the release of quarterly series on 17 November. This will include assessing the extent to which the estimated shift in the underlying level of the series resulting from the new methodology aligns with the level of the series from July 2008. It is possible this quality assurance will result in some change to the provisional quarterly estimate (presented in Trend analysis) and related monthly series.


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.