New York, NY, Aug. 25--Retail sales made via the Internet or other electronic means shot up in the second quarter.
U.S. e-commerce retail sales jumped 28% to $12.48 billion from $9.76 billion a year earlier, the Commerce Department reported Friday. The latest figure represented a 4.6% increase from the first quarter of this year.
The data aren't adjusted for seasonal, holiday and trading-day differences.
The increase in e-commerce retail sales, which represented 1.5% of overall retail sales during the quarter, was more than five times the 4.9% rise in overall sales.
Retail e-commerce sales are estimated based on the same survey used by the Commerce Department for calculating overall retail sales. According to usual practice, overall sales estimates for the quarter were released last week using a subsample of the survey, which wasn't large enough to measure changes in e-commerce sales.
