The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $368.9 billion, an increase of 1.0 percent (±0.8%) from the previous month and up 5.6 percent (±0.7%) from November 2005. Total sales for the September through November 2006 period were up 5.3 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The September to October 2006 percent change was revised from -0.4 percent (± 0.7%)* to -0.1 percent (± 0.2%)*.
Retail trade sales were up 1.1 percent (±0.8%) from October and were 5.3 percent (±0.8%) above last year. Nonstore retailers were up 10.1 percent (±4.5%) from November 2005 and sales of health and personal care stores were up 8.7 percent (±1.7%) from last year.
Let's dig a bit more into the numbers.
The biggest jump came from Electronics and Appliance Stores, which saw an increase of 4.6%. This is important because Prudential Securities downgraded Circuit City and Best Buy today. We also saw a 2.3% increase in gasoline sales. The recent uptick in gas prices helped out here. There was also a .9% increase in auto sales and parts. My guess is we are continuing to see a switch to more fuel efficient autos.
Bloomberg noted:
Wage gains are giving consumers the means to spend, keeping the economic expansion from unraveling as housing and manufacturing decline, economists said. Federal Reserve policy makers yesterday held the benchmark interest rate steady for a fourth straight meeting and said that ``the economy seems likely to expand at a moderate pace on balance.''
I previously noted that a decrease in energy related inflation was a primary reason for the wage gains. But as noted above, retail fuel prices are increasing. Obviously they haven't increased enough to debt consumer spending, but it's something to keep an eye on.
3 comments:
I look to see revisions to this feature at some point. Something doesn't add up. Didn't I see something yesterday about first half of 2006 wage increases being revised downwards?
I really think that a lot of people are asking for and receiving cash this Christmas. I also think that some of that, particularly for young people and young families, is going to purchase necessities, not discretionary consumer goods.
A few interesting comments going on over at CR.
"The Commerce Department said it made some revisions last month to the methodology it used to calculate the data. This makes it risky to over interpret the data given the unusually big increases in the report," said Michael Niemira, retail economist with the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)." --- ron @ 12:12pm
and
"SpendingPulse had a quite different report yesterday:
Retail sales rose 0.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in November, bouncing back from a 0.3 percent fall in October, according to SpendingPulse, which collects data from payment systems but excludes auto sales.
However, its "core" measure of sales, which excludes gasoline and building materials, recorded its first monthly drop since March, falling 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis after a 0.1 percent gain in October." -- MaxedOutMama @ 12:42 pm
Should we give this any credence?
Actaully, these days, I'm not sure what credence to give *any* numbers coming out of our government, but I'm hoping not everything has been politicized to the point of "truthiness."
Would be nice to see what the numbers would show with debt purchases versus non debt purchases, I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of purchases are on credit cards that will have to wait for the income ever to materialize and some never to be repaid.
This in the long run would reflect what most already know and that is the majority of the USA lives off of debt. But now, that majority of Americans are tapped out, defaults levels will also go up.
There by, creating a ripple effect throughout the world’s economy. The tapped out economy of the majority of the USA are going to pull the lenders in to the red, just a matter of time.
“House OF Cards” only takes one to be pulled for it all to crumble.
Would though like to see debt versus non debt purchases!
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