WASHINGTON — Furniture and home furnishings retail sales continued to slip, according to the Department of Commerce‘s latest report for April numbers.
For the sixth consecutive month, the segment posted declines from both the previous month and from the previous year.
For the month, the DOC’s advance monthly estimates credited the furniture and home furnishings stores category with $11.08 billion in adjusted estimated sales. That number was 3.6% off April 2025’s adjusted revised $11.5 billion, and down 2% on March’s adjusted preliminary $11.31 billion.
Through the first four months of the year, the DOC has brick-and-mortar furniture and home furnishings sales at an unadjusted $42.32 billion, a 3% decline from the same period in 2025.
Overall, retail and food services totaled $757.08 billion in adjusted estimated sales for April, up 0.5% from last month’s $753.37 billion and up 4.9% compared with the $721.90 billion in April 2025.
Segments that showed the best performance from March to April were gas stations (up 2.8%), electronics and appliance stores (up 1.4%), sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores (up 1.4%) and non-store retailers (up 1.1%).
With less than a 1% increase, several segments still took a positive turn: building material & garden equipment and supplies; food and beverage; general merchandise; miscellaneous store retailers; and food services and drinking places.
Besides the furniture and home furnishings segment, three other groups saw declines for the month: motor vehicle and parts dealers (down 0.4%); clothing and clothing accessories (down 1.5%); and the department stores subsegment (down 3.2%).
The DOC’s advance estimates are based on a sub-sample of the U.S. Census Bureau’s full retail and food services sample. A stratified random sampling method is used to select approximately 5,500 retail and food services firms whose sales are then weighted and benchmarked to represent the complete universe of more than 3 million retail and food services firms.
