E-Commerce Share of US Retail Sales Statistics 2026

What the Census Bureau’s Q1 2026 Release Shows

US retail e-commerce sales reached $326.7 billion, seasonally adjusted, in the first quarter of 2026, accounting for 16.9% of total retail sales of $1,929.0 billion, up 9.8% year over year, per the Census Bureau’s Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales release, published May 18, 2026. On a not-seasonally-adjusted basis, the same quarter’s e-commerce sales were $302.3 billion, 16.8% of total retail sales, a close, consistent read across both measures.

Why This Is a National Figure, Not a Small-Business One

The Census Bureau draws its e-commerce estimate from the same Monthly Retail Trade Survey sample used for total retail sales, roughly 10,800 sampled retail firms weighted to represent more than two million retail firms nationally. As of an April 2025 benchmark revision, that series excludes nonemployer firms, very small sole-proprietor businesses with no paid employees, which is a direct, sourced reason this national figure cannot be assumed to represent small-business e-commerce activity specifically. A meaningful share of the smallest actual small businesses simply is not in the sample the 16.9% figure is built from.

The right way to use this number is as a national backdrop, not a small-business-specific claim: e-commerce made up 16.9% of a $1,929.0 billion total retail quarter, and that backdrop is useful context for any conversation about a merchant’s own online-sales mix, even though the source itself does not isolate what share of that 16.9% came from small operators.

The Numbers

Sources

The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• US Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, 1st Quarter 2026
• Federal Reserve, National Payment Volumes, Top-Line Data (CY 2015-24)

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