Tag Archives: retail sales
Retail Sales Surprise to Upside
Retail sales squeaked out a modest increase of 0.1% in April, foiling expectations for a decline. Moreover, the biggest decline in the data was in gasoline station sales, where prices were falling. That freed up cash for consumers to spend elsewhere. Core retail sales, which exclude autos and gasoline, were up 0.6%, compounded by upward [...]
Retail Sales Drop on Chilly Weather and Cooling Economy
Retail sales dropped 0.4% on a drop in vehicle sales and falling prices at the pump. This suggests that much of the rise in vehicle sales that we saw in March was due to a recovering housing market or to business investment rather than pent-up consumer demand. Pickup trucks are the workhorses of the single-family [...]
Consumers Show Resilience in February
Consumer Shows Resilience in February Retail sales rose 1.1% in February, after being revised up in January. This gives credence to some of the recent strength in the broader stock indices and the importance to most households of rising housing prices. The increases in home prices have boosted household wealth and allowed consumers to spend [...]
January Incomes Plummet but Spending Edges Higher
Personal disposable incomes contracted at a whopping 4% monthly pace in January in response to a combination of hedging on tax hikes in December (which pulled income from January into December) and actual tax hikes on January 1. The expiration of the payroll tax holiday was a particularly large hit at the start of the [...]
Retail Sales Tepid in January
Retail sales rose a tepid 0.1% in January, as declines in vehicle and furniture sales offset increases elsewhere. Much of the strength in retail spending at the end of 2012 was concentrated in vehicles and big-ticket items as victims of Superstorm Sandy began the process of repairing and replacing damaged cars, furniture and appliances. Spending [...]
Labor Market Continues to Heal Unevenly
Non-farm payrolls rose 157,000 in January, which was less than expected. Benchmark revisions, however, showed that we created significantly more jobs in 2012 than initially reported: some 127,000 more in the last two months of the year alone. Total job gains in 2012 were 2.1 million, some 335,000 more than initially reported for the year. [...]
Hedging Tax Hikes Distorts Income, but Suppresses Spending
Personal disposable income growth jumped 2.8% in December, more than twice the increase in November. All of that acceleration may be attributed to special dividends and early bonuses that were released to top income earners by their employers as a way to avoid higher income taxes associated with the fiscal cliff negotiations. Indeed, personal disposable [...]
Question on retail sales
We received the following question: Why do the seasonally adjusted, electronics sales appeared to have declined in December vs. November? I answered: The big jump in unadjusted figures is the “holidays” effect on sales. In adjusted terms, the decline from November to December is relatively minor;
Retail Sales Rise Slightly; Producer Price Inflation Benign
Retail sales rose 0.5% in December, after being revised up in November. Vehicle sales continued to drive overall gains; insurance claims for autos, following damages from Superstorm Sandy, were among the first to be paid. There were also strong gains in furniture sales, which no doubt got a boost from Sandy and some of the [...]
Retail Sales Mixed on Sandy Disruptions; PPI Down on Energy
In November, retail sales increased 0.3% for the month, but were flat excluding auto sales. The Commerce Department reported that it was difficult to separate out the effects of Superstorm Sandy, as some stores were closed and even shut permanently by the storm, while others saw a surge in storm-related business. The composition of sales, [...]
Bloomberg asks Diane Swonk to explain Fed concern over unemployment
RSS Feeds