- by New Deal democrat
I have a post up at Seeking Alpha, taking a look at this morning’s retail sales and industrial production reports for February, and briefly considering their implications for employment in the coming months, even before the impact of coronavirus.
Here’s a graph that didn’t make it into that post, showing the past 25+ years of real retail sales (red), jobs (blue), and real aggregate payrolls (green):
For the past 11 months, real retail sales in February were only up +0.9%. We’ll never know for sure, but it is entirely possible that, even without coronavirus, real retail sales might have turned negative YoY this month, suggesting that job growth might screech to a halt in the next few months.
Also, in the more current weekly data, we got two important reads on chain store sales this morning. Both Redbook and the Retail Economist recorded surges in chain store sales last week, as consumer rushed to stockpile supplies.
