Annual Retail Trade Survey

The Annual Retail Trade Survey provides the only continuing official measure of annual sales, purchases, end-of-year inventories, sales/inventory ratios, and accounts receivable balances for the retail sector. The sales and inventories estimates are used as benchmarks for the monthly series. These data, along with purchases, are also used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the computation of the GDP. The accounts receivable balances are used by the Federal Reserve Board. Private businesses use the estimates in computing business activity indexes for market research, product development, and business planning to gauge the current trends of the economy. Responses are a sample of retail establishments in the U.S.

The latest form for Annual Retail Trade Survey expires 2021-02-28 and can be found here.