Clark County’s taxable retail sales increased by 8.8 percent during the 2014 calendar year, and Vancouver’s sales rose by 8.5 percent.
Both figures topped the overall Washington increase of 6.6 percent in the taxable retail category, the state reported Tuesday.
The city of Camas topped them all on a percentage increase basis, with a 13.4 percent jump in retail sales for all of 2014. The total sales figure for Camas was $218.6 million, less than one-tenth of Vancouver’s $3.01 billion in taxable retail sales. The taxable retail sales in all of Clark County hit $5.28 billion in 2014.
The county sales number for 2014 fell below the best year on record, 2006, which had an inflation-adjusted $5.588 billion in sales, said Scott Bailey, regional economist for the state Employment Security Department. The main reason is that the total taxable sales count includes the value of all construction permits, which were $420.9 million less in 2014 than in 2006, Bailey said.
Statewide, taxable retail sales in 2014 increased 6.6 percent for the year to $124.8 billion, the Department of Revenue reported. Top sales producers statewide included new and used car sales, up 7.9 percent to $10.76 billion; building materials, garden equipment and supplies, which rose 7.5 percent to $5.3 billion; e-commerce and mail order sales, up 19.8 percent to almost $2.1 billion; and drug and health store sales, which rose by 8.3 percent to $1.8 billion.
The boom in residential and commercial construction drove the construction industry to an overall increase of 9.6 percent to $21.1 billion. About $11.5 of that amount is in building construction, which rose by 9.7 percent.
But the rising tide of retail sales did not lift all categories into positive territory. Department stores dropped 2.2 percent to $2.96 billion. Bookstores and news dealers dropped by 1.5 percent to $295 million.
The state also tracks retail trade, a subset that excludes nonretail sectors such as construction and services. For the state as a whole, retail trade rose 4.8 percent to $56.3 billion. Clark County’s retail trade rose by 8.1 percent to $2.4 billion. That number was $43.7 million higher, or 1.8 percent, than the 2006 inflation-adjusted peak of $2.3 billion, Bailey said. On a per capita basis, sales were still lower in 2014, he said.
Vancouver showed the highest rate of growth among the five Washington cities with the most retail sales, with an 11.5 percent growth in retail trade, bringing the city’s total to $1.4 billion.
