WASHINGTON – U.S. retail and food-service sales increased to a seasonally adjusted $380.3 billion last month, an increase of 0.2 percent from their September level, after rising a revised 0.6 percent in September, according to a report today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The overall rise matched the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Excluding motor vehicles and parts, total sales rose 0.2 percent to $300.9 billion, lagging the survey’s prediction of a 0.3-percent gain.

Retail trade sales rose 0.1 percent, the smallest gain in four months, while sales at Internet vendors and other nonstore retailers fell 1.0 percent.

Gasoline station sales rose 0.8 percent, as fuel prices surged to a three-month high, and sales at food-services and drinking places rose 0.7 percent. But sales at furniture stores fell 0.9 percent and sporting-goods sales fell 0.4 percent – declines that were seen by analysts as bad news for the holiday shopping season.

“Consumer spending is slowing into the fourth quarter,” Drew Matus, a senior economist at Lehman in New York, told Bloomberg News. Today’s report “takes a few tenths off” the quarter’s spending total.

Compared with October 2006, total sales rose 5.2 percent. Excluding motor vehicles and parts, sales rose 5.2 percent.

In other year-over-year changes, retail trade sales rose 5.1 percent, sales at nonstore retailers rose 5.9 percent and gas station sales surged 16.3 percent. Food-service sales rose 5.6 percent.

Additional information, including the full Advance Monthly Sales for Retail Trade and Food Services news release, is available from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Census Bureau at www.census.gov/retail.