Retail Sales, Great Britain: May 2018

20th June 2018

In May 2018, the quantity bought in the retail industry increased by 1.3% when compared with April 2018 with growth across all main sectors.

Feedback from retailers suggested that a sustained period of good weather and Royal Wedding celebrations encouraged spending in food and household goods stores in May.

The quantity bought saw a sharp increase to year-on-year growth in May at 3.9% when compared with April at 1.4%; possibly due to a combination of warm weather and slow year-on-year growth in May 2017 at 0.8%.

Non-store retailing showed strong growth in the quantity bought when compared with the previous year at 16.2%, the previous month at 4.5% and in the three months to May at 4.9%.

Online spending for food, department and clothing stores continued to increase, achieving new record proportions of online retailing in May at 5.8%, 17.4% and 17.6% respectively.

The proportion of online spending in clothing stores has grown at a much faster rate in the last 14 months, from 14.7% in March 2017 to 17.6% in May 2018.

In May 2018, both the amount spent (value) and quantity bought (volume) showed growth across all measures (Table 1). When compared with the previous month, the amount spent increased by 1.6% and the quantity bought by 1.3%.

When compared with a year earlier, the amount spent and quantity bought in May both increased at a faster rate at 6.3% and 3.9% respectively. Figure 1 shows the sharp increase to the year-on-year growth rate for the quantity bought when compared with earlier months.

When compared with the same month a year earlier, the main contribution to the quantity of goods bought came from non-store retailing at 1.5 percentage points in May. Non-food stores provided positive contributions to both the quantity bought and amount spent at 1.3 and 1.9 percentage points respectively. Within non-food stores, household goods stores saw the strongest growth.

As the only sector to show no contribution to growth, petrol stations remained flat for the quantity bought, where the rising cost of fuel in May was the largest rise since April 2017 at 7.8%.

Source -Office For National Statistics

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/bulletins/retailsales/may2018