Australian retail sales rose 3.6% in February 2025 year-on-year adjusted for the leap year in 2024. The growth rate near 4% has been largely consistent for the past 5 months. Most drivers of spending are becoming more favourable – tax cuts, rate cuts and lower cost of living pressures, which influences our view that retail spending will continue near 4% over 2025.

What we’re seeing and hearing in retail

• Promotions continue: Afterpay Day ran from 20-23 March and Amazon ran the Big Smile sale which finished on 23 March. Both were events also run in 2024.
• Dry February, wet March: Since November 2024, retail sales trends have been good. The weather has been warmer and drier. That changed in March 2025.
• Retail sales to be discontinued: The ABS will discontinue retail sales releases from July 2025 onwards. This is a risk for investors, companies and regulators who rely on this data. The replacement only gives product spending, not retail categories and relies on a survey from 2013.

Sub-sector insights

• Supermarkets: Supermarket industry sales rose 3.7%, which continues sluggish rate of growth albeit dragged lower by declining tobacco volumes.
• Liquor: Off-premise liquor sales were down 1.7% in February with dry weather shifting liquor spend to out-of-home. Lower excise tax hikes in bottled spirits vs prior period impacted sales growth.
• Takeaway food and restaurant: Takeaway food sales grew at 3.2% and cafes & restaurants were up 3.3%. We are lapping the most notable shift toward at-home consumption and trading down behaviour in early 2024.
• Pharmacy & cosmetics: Pharmacy and cosmetics has continued its strong run of sales, with growth of 10.8%. This category is benefiting from store growth, consumer participation growth and product innovation.
• Electronics: Electronics retailers sales rose 4.6%, in February 2025, which reflected a small improvement on January and may be the shift in timing of the Samsung phone launch.
• Hardware and furniture: Hardware sales increased 2.3%. Given better housing churn and weather, it is a little surprising to see soft sales in hardware.
• Recreational goods: Recreational goods only rose 1.0% in February 2025, but did have unusually strong growth in January.
• Department stores: Department stores had sales growth of 3.6%. Myer had called out total sales declining 2.6% for Feb and first two weeks of March.
• Fashion: Clothing was up only 0.3%, while footwear was up 2.1%. The weak growth in clothing was impacted by lapping merchandise sales for Taylor Swift and Pink concerts in 2024, as called out by Premier retail.
• Online retail: Online sales increased 10.8%. The low double-digit growth has been fairly consistent since July 2024.

Australian retail sales long-term trends

Source: ABS, MST Marquee