Washington ? Consumers went shopping for everything from clothes to furniture last month, helping to calm fears that a key segment of the economy might be faltering.

Retail sales rose 0.3 percent in July, the Commerce Department said Monday in a report that showed strength in a wide array of areas outside of autos.

The rebound came after a 0.7 percent decline in June, the sharpest decline in 16 months. It was originally reported as an even bigger 0.9 percent fall and had raised concerns that soaring gasoline prices and a slumping housing market were beginning to take their toll on consumer spending, which is closely watched by economists because it accounts for two-thirds of the total economy.

But analysts took heart from the July rebound.

“Consumers are holding tough,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “They are surprisingly resilient in the face of near-record high gasoline prices and the unraveling housing market.”

Zandi and other analysts said as long as consumer spending continues to show gains, it will lessen concerns that the economy could lapse into a recession caused by the worst housing downturn in 16 years and recent turmoil in financial markets caused by spreading problems in credit markets.

Wall Street, which was battered last week by global credit worries, could not hold on to early gains Monday with the Dow Jones industrial average closing down 3.01 points at 13,236.53, according to preliminary calculations.

A separate survey released Monday by the Federal Reserve found that banks, responding to rising home foreclosures especially in the market for subprime loans, tightened their lending standards in the past three months. More than half of the banks surveyed tightened their standards for subprime loans, according to the survey, while nearly half of the banks said they had tightened standards on so-called nontraditional mortgages such as interest-only mortgages.

Wall Street suffered through some stomach-churning days last week because of worries about how credit problems that began in the market for subprime mortgages might spread to other types of loans until the Fed and other central banks around the world added extra money to try to stem fears of a full-blown credit crunch.

While analysts were pleased by the rebound in July retail sales and the upward revisions to activity in earlier months, they cautioned that consumer spending could still be shaken if the financial market problems intensify.

In a third report, the Commerce Department said that businesses built up their inventories by 0.4 percent in June, right in line with expectations. The gain supported the view that inventory rebuilding will help support economic growth in the second half of this year and offset weakness in such areas as housing.