Oct. 9--Back-to-school shopping needs apparently outweighed consumers' concerns about the recession in September, allowing a lot of retailers to report better sales than expected and even, in the case of several chains, raise earnings guidance for the quarter.

By one trade group's calculations, sales in established stores at about 30 chains rose 0.1 percent during the month compared with the same period in 2008 when the financial markets were terrifying both regulators and consumers. It might not sound like much of an increase, but the news was welcome.

"Small as that gain was, it was the first year-over-year increase since July 2008, and marked a significant psychological turning point for the industry performance, as well as the start of the retail recovery," said Michael P. Niemira, chief economist and director of research for the New York-based International Council of Shopping Centers, in his analysis of the results.

Others agreed. "September's numbers are a good sign that retail sales are on a path to recovery," wrote Frank Badillo, senior economist at Retail Forward, a consulting and research firm in Columbus, Ohio.

Yet they and other industry observers cautioned that a late Labor Day this year delayed some back-to-school shopping and that it was easy to show an improvement over the rocky fall months of 2008.

"It's still unclear whether the consumer is back or not," said Steven Baumgarten, an analyst with PNC Capital Advisors in Philadelphia who noted about half of the chains that reported results still reported decreases in sales at stores open at least a year, a key industry statistic sometimes called comparable store sales.

Although the biggest industry player, Wal-Mart, no longer participates in the monthly sales revelations that help investors track how things are going in retail, data coming out of other chains showed that discounters appeared to be drawing in shoppers.

Target, which reported a 1.7 percent drop in comparable store sales, said the size of transactions in its stores was down during the month but that was partially offset by more transactions taking place. The company said its third-quarter results would beat analysts' expectations.

Both J.C. Penney and Kohl's raised their earnings guidance. Kohl's comparable store sales rose 5.5 percent in September, while Penney's dropped 1.4 percent, a better performance than the 3 percent to 6 percent drop that company officials had expected.

TJX Companies, parent of the off-price chains T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, proved especially popular, with comparable store sales results up 7 percent over last year.