Furniture and home furnishings sales continued shrinking the year-over-year gap in the Department of Commerce’s advance monthly estimates report for July.

For the month, the category recorded an adjusted $11.11 billion in sales, down 2.4% compared with $11.39 billion in July 2023 but up half a point vs. June’s revised adjusted $11.05 billion.

For the year, the category has accumulated $79.45 billion in sales, which is 6.2% off 2023’s pace. However, it shaved 0.8% off the sales deficit since last month’s report was published.

July’s overall retail snapshot includes an adjusted $709.67 billion in sales, up 2.7% against last year’s $691.25 billion, and up 1% when stacked up against June’s revised adjusted $702.86 billion.

While furniture and home furnishings were off 2023’s pace for the month, it didn’t have the biggest year-over-year dip. That belonged to sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores, which was down 6.8%. Of note for the furniture category, the building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers category showed a 0.4% increase in YOY sales.

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.