Retail sales rose 0.8 percent in August and prices at the wholesale level jumped 0.3 percent, but neither report was enough to support Wall StreetÛªs fears of a return to raging inflation or an economy heating up, economists said yesterday.</br></br>Many analysts said there is little evidence to suggest that the economy will continue on anything but a sluggish track, including the latest government statistics released yesterday. Many traders who fueled the record 86-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average on Thursday were relying on a report last week showing that civilian unemployment in August declined from 6.9 to 6.8 percent, economists said.</br></br>However, economists said that a small drop in unemployment for one month does not make a trend and that other statistics suggest continued stagnation.</br></br>The Labor Department yesterday reported that the increase in the producer price index followed a 0.4 percent decline in July and no change in June.</br></br>In a separate report, the Commerce Department reported that the retail sales increase was the largest since a 0.9 percent rise in April. However, the increase in August was all attributed to brisk auto sales. Sales were up 0.3 percent in July.