Retail Foot Traffic Statistics 2024–2025: Nine Months of Decline by the Numbers

U.S. retail foot traffic in 2024 and 2025 tells a split-screen story: headline annual numbers looked nearly flat, but the detail underneath — by month, category, and store format — shows sustained declines in many corners of physical retail. Full-year 2024 foot traffic edged up just 0.4% year over year, masking a reported 12% drop in the latter half of the year. Full-year 2025 recovered to a +1.8% gain, per Colliers, yet monthly readings stayed negative for much of the year and specific categories kept losing shoppers well into 2026.

The 2024 Baseline: A Flat Top Line With a Collapsing Second Half

The full-year 2024 aggregate (+0.4% YoY) hides the real story. According to sector analysis, U.S. retail foot traffic fell roughly 12% in the last six months of 2024, a swing large enough to signal a structural rather than cyclical shift. Category performance split sharply: grocery rose 2.27% and apparel gained 3.93% with a 7.4% sales lift, while electronics stores fell 1.23% and theaters and music venues dropped 5.82%. Discount and dollar stores — often a recession-era beneficiary — gained only 1.3%, below the sector average.

Month-by-Month 2025: Declines Ran Most of the Year

RetailNext, tracking over 7 million shopping trips across thousands of U.S. stores, documented negative year-over-year readings nearly every month of 2025. The steepest drops came in the first half: -4.4% in February, -4.2% in March, and -4.3% in June. Back-to-school season provided relative relief — July slipped only -2.3% and August -2.8% — but those still represent declines. March 2025 retail foot traffic dipped 0.3% year over year per Colliers, even as retail sales rose 3.4% that same month, illustrating the widening gap between visits and dollars spent.

The Sales-vs.-Traffic Divergence Is the Key Signal

For the full year 2025, Colliers confirmed retail sales rose 3.7% while foot traffic grew only 1.8%. That 190-basis-point gap means revenue gains are being driven by higher prices and larger basket sizes — not more people walking in. Fewer trips, bigger spend per trip is now the dominant pattern. The same dynamic appeared on Black Friday 2025: RetailNext reported traffic down 3.6% on Friday and 8.6% on Saturday year over year, yet sales still rose 1.0% for the day.

Category Losers: Who Is Still Declining

• Footwear: PassBy data shows visits to shoe retailers fell in every quarter from 2024 through Q3 2026. The sharpest drop was Q4 2025 at -8.38% YoY; the decline moderated to -3.56% in Q3 2026 but has not returned to positive territory in any state.
• Target: Recorded a 3.8% decline in July 2025, marking six consecutive months of lower visits — a notable data point for a retailer with nationwide reach.
• Electronics: Lost 1.23% in visits in 2024 with lower sales accompanying the traffic drop; consumers remain cautious on big-ticket purchases.
• QSR and street-level retail: A sharp break on June 6, 2025 sent weekly pedestrian traffic down 10% or more for the rest of the year at one analyzed retailer fleet — a 30-point swing from gains recorded only months earlier, per QSR Magazine.

Bright Spots: Who Is Still Drawing Crowds

• Indoor malls: Visits were up 1.8% YoY in June 2025; by August 2026, Placer.ai data showed indoor mall visits up 5.0% YoY and open-air centers up 6.6%.
• Grocery: Rose 2.27% in 2024 and maintained positive momentum through 2025.
• Apparel: December 2025 apparel visits fell 7% from December 2024 (1.01B vs. 1.08B), but the full-year arc was more resilient than hard goods categories.

Store Closures Add Structural Pressure

Approximately 5,100 new store openings occurred in 2025 — an 8% decrease from the prior year — while closures outpaced openings by nearly 2-to-1. Fewer locations mean fewer doors for traffic to flow through, compounding the per-location visit declines visible in the data. If your business relies on automations tied to these retail data pipelines, it is worth checking when those integrations could break — a risk outlined in detail in Your AI Automations May Stop Working on a Specific Date in January — and You Probably Don’t Know It.

What Drives the Decline

Three forces dominate: (1) e-commerce has grown 56% since 2020, with same-day delivery usage tripling; (2) BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) reached $177.9 billion in 2026, pulling visits away from browse-and-buy trips; and (3) persistent price sensitivity is consolidating trips — shoppers visit fewer times but spend more when they do go. The net result is a retail environment where traffic metrics and sales metrics increasingly tell different stories, and operators who manage to headline numbers alone will miss the real pressure building beneath.

Sources: Colliers U.S. Retail Monthly Foot Traffic & Sales Analysis 2025 Recap (colliers.com, Feb. 2026); RetailNext Black Friday 2025 report (retailnext.net); RetailNext 2025 Back-to-School Data (retailnext.net); PassBy U.S. Footwear Retail Foot Traffic report (passby.com, 2026); QSR Magazine retail foot traffic analysis (qsrmagazine.com); The Real Deal / Colliers March 2025 foot traffic report (therealdeal.com); E-commerce News Hub Retail Foot Traffic Statistics 2026 (ecommercenewshub.com); Review42 Retail Statistics 2026 (resources.review42.com)