U.S. consumers continued shifting more retail spending online in the second quarter of 2026. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that retail e-commerce sales reached $340.2 billion, after seasonal adjustment, an increase of 3.8% from the first quarter and 12.2% from a year earlier.

The increase outpaced the broader retail market. Total U.S. retail sales were estimated at $1.9865 trillion for the quarter, rising 2.9% from the previous quarter and 6.7% from the second quarter of 2025. As a result, e-commerce accounted for 17.1% of total retail sales, up from 16.3% a year earlier.

The figures offer one of the clearest official measures of how deeply online purchasing has become embedded in American retail. They also require some care in interpretation. The $340.2 billion figure is a preliminary, seasonally adjusted estimate expressed in current dollars, not a measure of inflation-adjusted sales volume.

The Census Bureau's current estimates put second-quarter 2025 e-commerce sales at $303.3 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis. That means online sales increased by about $37 billion over the following year, reaching $340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026.

The 12.2% year-over-year increase was substantially stronger than the 6.7% increase in total retail sales over the same period. The Census Bureau reports a margin of error of plus or minus 0.9 percentage points for the e-commerce increase and plus or minus 0.5 percentage points for total retail sales. Those margins correspond to 90% confidence intervals used by the agency.

E-commerce also expanded faster during the quarter itself. The latest release shows revised first-quarter 2026 online sales of approximately $327.9 billion, meaning sales increased by roughly $12.4 billion in the second quarter. The earlier first-quarter release had reported a preliminary estimate of $326.7 billion, illustrating why the newest vintage of Census data should be used when comparing quarters.

E-commerce represented 17.1% of seasonally adjusted U.S. retail sales in Q2 2026, compared with 17.0% in the first quarter, 16.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 16.3% in the second quarter of 2025, according to the latest Census estimates.

That share is based on the same broad retail framework used for the Census Bureau's retail sales statistics. It does not represent every transaction conducted digitally across the U.S. economy.

The agency defines an e-commerce sale as one in which the buyer places an order, or the price and terms are negotiated, through the internet, a mobile device, an extranet, Electronic Data Interchange, email or another comparable online system. Payment does not have to occur online for the transaction to qualify.

At the same time, several categories of digital spending sit outside the measure. Online travel services, financial brokers and dealers, and ticket sales agencies are not classified as retail and therefore are excluded from both the retail and retail e-commerce estimates.

The headline $340.2 billion figure is seasonally adjusted. Census adjusts the data to reduce the effects of predictable seasonal patterns, allowing more meaningful comparisons between consecutive quarters. The estimates are not adjusted for changes in prices, so they are nominal dollar figures rather than measures of the quantity of goods sold.

On an unadjusted basis, second-quarter e-commerce sales were estimated at $329.5 billion. That was 9.4% higher than the first quarter and 12.4% above the second quarter of 2025. Unadjusted e-commerce accounted for 16.4% of total retail sales during the quarter.

The difference between the adjusted and unadjusted figures reflects the Census Bureau's treatment of recurring seasonal patterns. For tracking underlying quarterly growth, the seasonally adjusted series provides the more useful comparison.

The Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales Report is built from the same sample used for the Monthly Retail Trade Survey. Census uses a stratified random sample of approximately 10,800 retail firms, excluding food services, and weights and benchmarks their sales to represent a universe of more than two million retail employer firms.

Businesses report e-commerce sales separately each month. For companies that do not respond, Census imputes data using information from businesses in the same type and size category or from the company's historical performance. Responding firms account for roughly 68% of the e-commerce sales estimate in a typical quarter. Monthly estimates are weighted and benchmarked before being combined into quarterly totals.

The methodology also changed in 2025. Beginning with the April 2025 annual revision, businesses without paid employees were removed from the quarterly e-commerce estimates, and the historical time series was revised to maintain consistency with the new coverage. The current figures therefore cover employer retail firms.

The second-quarter figures show that e-commerce was not merely rising alongside the broader retail market. It was growing faster.

With sales up 12.2% year over year, compared with 6.7% for total retail sales, e-commerce increased its share of retail spending to 17.1%. That does not mean 17.1% of all U.S. consumer spending occurs online, since the Census measure covers retail trade rather than the entire consumer economy.

What it does show is that, within the Census Bureau's defined retail market, online purchasing continued to capture a larger portion of sales in the second quarter of 2026. At $340.2 billion in a single quarter, e-commerce is now responsible for roughly one in every six dollars of measured U.S. retail sales.