Total retail sales

In 2026, retail sales will climb 2.6% higher from 2025, reflecting steady job growth, moderating inflation and solid household balance sheets that keep consumer spending intact despite higher borrowing costs. Growth skews toward nonstore and omnichannel formats as retailers refine curbside pickup, same-day delivery and app-based shopping, while in-store traffic stabilizes, particularly in food services and experiential retail following a full pivot away from pandemic-era restrictions. Consumers trade down in some discretionary categories but continue to prioritize essentials, value retailers and promotional events, leaving overall real sales slightly above prior-year levels and consistent with the 0.6% CAGR recorded between 2021 and 2026.

Over the past five years, total retail sales have transitioned from an unprecedented surge to a slower, more sustainable trajectory. The 2021 spike in spending, fueled by federal stimulus, elevated savings and a historic shift toward home goods and online shopping, pushed sales to record levels and reset the baseline for the entire period. As stimulus faded and economies reopened in 2022 and 2023, inflation eroded real purchasing power, and demand rotated back toward services, cooling real retail growth and producing slight declines. From 2024 through 2025, growth normalized. Nominal sales expanded in line with income and population, while real gains stayed muted as tighter monetary policy, higher interest rates and cautious consumers limited big-ticket purchases but supported steady spending on necessities and affordable discretionary items.

E-commerce's rising share has been the defining structural trend, climbing into the mid-teens as a percentage of total sales and growing faster than store-based formats each year, even after the pandemic's peak. This digital expansion, reinforced by widespread mobile adoption and logistics upgrades, helped offset weakness in some brick-and-mortar categories and kept total real sales on a gently upward path, in contrast with the deep contraction and multiyear recovery that characterized the 2007-2009 downturn.