WASHINGTON – Sales from furniture and home furnishings stores came in at $45.1 billion during the first four months of 2021, which is a 45.3% increase over last year, according to the Department of Commerce’s monthly report on retail sales.
Furniture sales in April continued to climb with the advanced estimate for the seasonally adjusted number coming in at $11.9 billion in April 2021 compared with $3.97 billion in April 2020, taking into consideration that many retail stores were closed during this time last year due to the pandemic.
Year-over-year growth in the furniture and home furnishings store category may reflect ongoing consumer demand in the category and interest in home-related projects with people spending more time at home and may lessen now that some pandemic restrictions have been lifted allowing people to spend money on travel, dining and other options.
Those strong home furnishings results matched the overall gains for most U.S. retail and food services sales sectors, with total sales coming in at $616.69 billion, a 22.2% increase during the past four-month period.
Looking at top-performing sectors for the past four months, furniture and home furnishings store sales took home the third largest month-over-month increase at 45.3%, beaten out by sporting goods, hobby, and musical instrument stores, which was up 59.4%, and clothing and clothing accessories stores, up 57.7%.
Also for the past four months, the only category that dropped year-over-year was grocery, which fell by 0.4% with all other categories posting gains, including building material and garden supply dealers with a four-month increase of 25.5%.
