IDEX Online Research: U.S. Jewelry Sales Almost Flat in 2008

Jewelry sales in the U.S. were about $64.9 billion in 2008, according to very preliminary figures just released by the U.S. government this week. This is a slight increase of 0.6 percent over 2007’s recently revised estimate of $64.5 billion.

The government will revise its jewelry sales estimate several times over the next few months, after which it will continue fine-tuning the sales data for up to a year or more.

IDEX Online Research believes that this very preliminary sales estimate will be revised downward, and will eventually show that sales in the U.S. market were flat or down slightly in 2008 versus the prior year.

Monthly jewelry sales numbers for each of the twelve months in 2008 will be published by IDEX Online early next week.