The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for December, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences (but not for price changes) were $343.2 billion, a decrease of 2.7 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month and 9.8 percent (±0.7%) below December 2007. Total sales for the October through December 2008 period were down 7.7 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. However, total sales for the 12 months of 2008 were down 0.1 percent (±0.4%) from 2007.