With a big boost from inflation, e-commerce sales revenue in the US exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in 2022. But a far more reliable metric of its growth rate—the e-commerce share of overall retail sales—appears to be stalled between 14% and 15%.

Direct-to-consumer sales exploded during the lockdowns of the pandemic. At one point in 2020, US consumers were buying an estimated 70% of their groceries online. E-commerce sales as a percentage of total retail sales surged to a peak of 16.4% in Q2 2020, up from pre-pandemic levels that hovered around 14%.

"The e-commerce share of retail was growing at about 1% per year prior to the pandemic, but the surge in 2020 pulled forward growth by about three years. What we have seen since that initial surge is a leveling off in terms of the penetration rate," James Bohnaker, Senior Economist, Cushman & Wakefield, told GlobeSt.com.