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Retail Trade, Australia

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Monthly and quarterly estimates of turnover and volumes for retail businesses, including store and online sales.

Reference period
December 2022
Released
31/01/2023

Key statistics

The December 2022 seasonally adjusted estimate: 

  • Fell 3.9% month-on-month.
  • Rose 7.5% compared with December 2021.
  • In volume terms, the seasonally adjusted estimate fell 0.2% in the December quarter 2022.

An additional information release on 6 February 2023 has seen the inclusion of more detailed results for the December 2022 reference period. Additional timeseries spreadsheets have been published, including; state by industry results, state by industry sub-group results, December quarter 2022 turnover volumes, and online sales. Changes to quarterly time series from the extraordinary annual seasonal review (EASR) and now reflected in Tables 5-10.

To understand more about changes in this issue, suspension of trend estimates, and COVID-19 in December 2022, please read the survey impacts and changes section below.

Turnover at current prices
Dec-2022 ($m)Nov-2022 to Dec-2022 (% change)Dec-2021 to Dec-2022 (% change)
Trendnanana
Seasonally adjusted34,472.3-3.97.5

na not available

Turnover in volume terms
December Qtr 2022 ($m)September Qtr 2022 to December Qtr 2022 (% change)December Qtr 2021 to December Qtr 2022 (% change)
Trendnanana
Seasonally adjusted96,877.7-0.21.8

Total retail turnover

Analysis by industry

Food retailing

Food retailing rose 0.3% ($47.2m) in December, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Household goods retailing

Household goods retailing fell 7.8% (-$488.4m) in December, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing

Clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing fell 13.1% (-$417.9m) in December, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Department stores

Department stores fell 14.3% (-$288.0m) in December, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Other retailing

Other retailing fell 4.6% (-$252.3m) in December, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services

Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services was relatively unchanged 0.0% (-$0.9m) in December, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Online retailing

Total online retailing sales were $3,812.1m in December 2022, in seasonally adjusted terms. Seasonally adjusted online sales fell 5.7 per cent (-$230.6m), following a rise of 13.5 per cent ($479.3m) in November 2022. Seasonally adjusted through-the-year sales are up 7.8 per cent ($274.7m).

Original sales in December 2022 fell by 3.7 per cent (-$176.2m) following elevated online trading from Click Frenzy and Black Friday sales events in November 2022.

In December 2022, food online sales were $1,119.0m, and non-food online sales were $2693.1m, in seasonally adjusted terms. Non-food sales fell 8.7 per cent (-$257.2m), while food sales rose 2.4 per cent ($26.6m).

In original terms, the proportion of online non-food retailing sales to total non-food retailing fell from 19.4 per cent to 15.7 per cent. The proportion for online food retailing sales to total food retailing fell from 5.8 per cent to 5.2 per cent. In December 2021 the non-food proportion was 15.4 per cent and the food proportion was 5.4 per cent.

In original terms, the proportion of online sales to total retailing fell from 12.6 per cent in November 2022 to 10.4 per cent in December 2022. In December 2021 this proportion was 10.5 per cent.

Additional notes regarding the online sales series can be found in the Methodology.

Data downloads

Tables 5 through to 23 have been made available on 6 February 2023. This includes December quarterly retail turnover contained in Tables 5 through to 10. Tables 1 to 4 remain unchanged from their release on 31 January 2023. 

Time series spreadsheets

Data files

Data Explorer datasets

The data available in Data Explorer is similar to ABS.Stat but with a new interface and added functionality.
For more information about Data Explorer and to see what's changed, see the Data Explorer user guide.

Caution: Data in Data Explorer is currently released after the 11:30am release on the ABS website. Please check the reference period when using Data Explorer.

Retail Trade, Key Statistics - Monthly retail trade estimates for Australian businesses classified by industry group, or by state and territory.

Retail Trade  - Monthly and quarterly retail trade turnover estimates for Australian businesses classified by industry group, sub group, and by state and territory.

Survey impacts and changes

The release schedule for Retail Trade, Australia

Changes in this issue

Suspension of trend series

Coronavirus (COVID-19) in December

Differences between Retail Trade and New Experimental Economic Indicators

Post release changes

06/02/2023 - As advertised in the main release of this publication on 31 January 2023, the time series spreadsheets for tables 5 through to 23 are now available under the Data Downloads section. This includes:

  • December monthly results for State by Industry Subgroup, Completely Enumerated (large) and Sample (small) businesses, and Online Retail Turnover. 
  • December quarter 2022 results, available in tables 5 through to 10. 
  • There are revisions to original estimates of Quarterly retail turnover per capita - current prices in Table 19 due to the incorporation of more up-to-date data from the September quarter 2020. 
  • In addition, an online retailing section has been added to this publication, which shows the most-up-to-date online retail sales.

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 8501.0.

Inquiries

For inquiries about these and related statistics, contact the Customer Assistance Service via the ABS website Contact Us page. The ABS Privacy Policy outlines how the ABS will handle any personal information that you provide to us.

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