Industry grows to $71.6B at retail in 2003, up 2.7%
By Jay McIntosh -- Furniture Today, March 7, 2004
WASHINGTON — U.S. furniture and bedding retail sales reached $71.6 billion last year, a 2.7% increase from 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
This new estimate for 2003 is about $4.2 billion higher than the industry was tracking through October, according to earlier numbers. Government economists changed their reckoning of the industry's size — on figures dating back as far as 1959 — as part of a rebenchmarking, a broad adjustment of consumer spending statistics done once every five years.
Numbers for the years 1998 through 2002 are about $3 billion higher than earlier estimates.
Still, the industry's rate of growth in recent years didn't change much. Commerce now says furniture and bedding sales declined 0.5% in 2001 and grew 3.8% in 2002, compared with the earlier estimates of a 0.6% dip and 4.5% growth, respectively.
The spending number represents the total size of the industry at retail, counting sales through all distribution channels.
Greg Kay, an economist with the Department of Commerce, said the rebenchmarking affected nearly all categories of consumer goods and services since 1993 and a few before then. In the case of furniture and bedding, the restated numbers are based entirely on new data incorporated into the estimates and not because any product categories or channels of distribution were changed, added or dropped, he said.
In general, Commerce reduced its consumer spending estimates for the industry in 1994 and earlier and raised them from 1995 on.
In the new view, furniture and bedding sales rose faster between 1992 and 1997 than earlier believed, while the annual rates of growth from 1998 on changed only a little.
Government statisticians also changed the standard they use for numbers adjusted for price inflation — or in the furniture industry's case in recent years, deflation. Adjusted numbers are now stated in "chained" 2000 dollars, rather than the 1996 dollars used previously.
In chained 2000 dollars, the industry's sales in 2003 came to $75.4 billion, compared with the $71.6 billion in estimated sales in current dollars. This shows the government believes the goods that cost $71.6 billion in 2003 would have cost $75.4 billion three years earlier, suggesting a price decline of about 5%.
In chained dollars, the industry grew an estimated 6% in 2002 and 4% in 2003.
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