The U.S. Census Bureau said Tuesday that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food sales for March were $441.4 billion, up by 0.9 percent from the previous month, and 1.3 percent higher than in March 2014.
The figure had fallen 0.5 percent in February.
It was the first time in four months that retail sales rose. The 0.9 percent improvement, though, was less than the 1.1 percent increase economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected, the Wall Street Journal reported.
