US E-Commerce Sales Hit $340.2 Billion in Q2 2026, Up 12.2% Year-Over-Year

US retail e-commerce sales reached $340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, according to Census Bureau data — up 3.8% from Q1 2026 and 12.2% year-over-year, with e-commerce now accounting for 17.1% of total US retail sales.

Why the Year-Over-Year Number Is the More Meaningful One

Quarter-over-quarter e-commerce growth is heavily influenced by seasonal purchasing patterns, making the 12.2% year-over-year figure a more reliable signal of underlying growth trajectory than the 3.8% sequential number alone. Sustained double-digit annual growth, with e-commerce's total retail share continuing to climb, confirms the channel shift toward online retail remains active in 2026, not plateauing.

• 17.1% e-commerce share of total retail sales represents continued structural growth in online retail's importance, contextualizing the AI-driven discovery, semantic search, and agentic commerce trends covered elsewhere in this batch — these aren't marginal optimizations to a stagnant channel, they're happening within a genuinely growing e-commerce sector
• This data point is useful as a baseline for any retailer benchmarking their own e-commerce growth rate against the broader market — underperforming 12.2% year-over-year growth is a real, measurable signal worth investigating, not necessarily just normal variance