Retail sales from Quarter One of 2023 have been released for the Galesburg and Monmouth communities as compared to the same quarter of the previous year, shares Knox County Area Partnership President Ken Springer:
“Pretty good news, Galesburg was up about 5.09 percent over the same quarter in 2022. Monmouth was just slightly down, a decline of 0.28 percent, so almost flat there, but Monmouth has been doing really good here in the recent quarters. Pretty good quarterly retail numbers. Galesburg had growth in almost all product categories except for apparel, which kind of makes sense because has lost a couple of different apparel retailers over the years if you think about JC Penney’s, Bergner’s, etc. Monmouth has shown growth in the general merchandise category and the grocery and restaurant categories during the quarter.”
Springer reports for the twelve cities they track, the overall average growth in retail sales for the first quarter of 2023 was 3.7 percent.