My uncle, who owns a prominent retail business chain in the region, told me that business for him is extremely slow, and he chalks it up to high gas prices.
Take that for what it’s worth.
And just now, the local NBC affiliate runs a spot about how sales are up 7% this year. :dubious:
Christmas was pretty low-key for me this year. I just didn’t have the time, money, or energy. I think a lot of my co-workers felt the same way. Nobody even felt like organizing the big potluck lunch that we normally have. Our bonuses, which now come in March, were way lower than previous years. Snow fell early, so a lot of procrastinators never put outdoor lights up. The stores were never super busy, except for the grocery store yesterday (I suspect that was partially weather-related as well–I would have gone Saturday or Sunday, but the roads were terrible.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if sales were down this Christmas. I feel too burnt out these days just doing regular stuff. A day off doing nothing at all would be more special to me than just about any gift.
Let’s not forget that farmers in the United States always complain that the last year had the worst weather and crop yield of all time; it was either the wettest or driest season since weather statistics were first kept.
Crisis averted! The economy is saved for another year!
(In some sectors, sales were up 20% over the year before.) Whew! Your housing’s worth nothing, your credit cards are all maxed out, and your income has been flat, but you still managed to pull it out at the last minute! Thank you, America! 
Working in retail ecommerce here…
Without disclosing anything that will get me in trouble, I can tell you that I know overall consumer spending is down, especially for big-ticket items (plasma TVs, cars, and the like) due to lower “consumer confidence.” Combined with increases in the baseline cost of business due to increased energy costs, among other things, this can cause serious problems.
And bear in mind that the amount of margin in many retail businesses (the difference between the retailer’s cost and what you pay) has been steadily shrinking. Things are getting cheaper to manufacture, but retail prices are dropping as well. Take plasma TVs, for example. A few years ago, you were looking at $10,000 or more. This year, prices are under $1,000. Even if the retailer’s margin percentage stayed stable, that’s still a lot less revenue per sale.
That’s not to say that there isn’t some amount of bullshit in the gloom & doom stories, of course. But there are plenty of retailers who are on the edge of going under, and when was the last time you saw a happy story on the evening news?
Yeah. Final answer seems to be a raise of 3.6%, which is lower than expectations. So…spending isn’t down; in fact it’s up, anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Hell, luxury goods rose by 7.1% So, only in America can that be a disappointment, I guess.
Well I spent less this year then I did last year.
Only when you don’t adjust the figures for inflation.
That depends on whether the studies quoted in those news stories take inflation into account when calculating changing year-to-year spending patterns. It doesn’t say whether or not they do in the news articles that i’ve looked at. If you have definitive evidence that they do, or don’t, i’d be happy to see it.
Thanks for the link.
So, it does indeed seem as though sales are slightly down this year, once inflation is taken into account.
I must say, though, that i still can’t get too worked up about it. The notion that there somehow NEEDS to be a substantial increase in spending every holiday season is pretty wrongheaded thinking in the first place, IMO.
Agreed, and automobile sales are always weak in December. People don’t like buying a shiny new car if they know it’s going to get covered in ice and snow and salt the moment they drive it off the lot.
It seems like that sort of ‘wrongheaded thinking’ rears its head every time the nation starts flirting with recession.
Of course, it’s never reported that we actually have recessions until ‘the worst is past.’ Econ reporting is funny in a lot of ways.
Yes, and what counts as a recession and what doesn’t isn’t something that’s carved in stone, either. Certain economists look over the data, think about it, and say, “We’re in a recession!” It’s not like any reasonably intelligent person could get the data and say, “Well, these elements are all down by X amount, so that means we’re in a recession.” Nope. There’s no set rules for what constitutes a recession, which says to me that economics has as much to do with science as astrology, and that much of it is no better than divining the future by reading goat entrails.
Without saying anything that will get me in trouble…consumer spending, using one particular type of credit card that you would recognize in an instant, is up 7% between this holiday season and last year’s.
A modest increase, but an increase nonetheless.
I’ll bet this news, just puts the cherry on top of the joy in the Christmas stocking of that particular credit company:
To the banks that issue the credit cards…yes. To the company that manages the transaction network…no. They don’t care if you carry a balance, pay your bill, or what your interest rate is, just as long as you use the card.
Not including gift cards in the sales totals is true flim-flam. I’ve seen economists on the news saying things like, “And now that Christmas is over people will be using those gift cards, which will really help sales.” HELP sales? Okay, maybe we need to go over what a gift card really is again…
A gift card is basically an interest-free loan to the company you’re buying it from. If you buy a $50 gift card on December 1st, that company has $50 extra in its pockets, on which it may earn interest for 25 days until your intended recipient unwraps that card. When the card is used, the company is losing the money it had previously borrowed from you, handing it over in the form of merchandise. The company gains nothing from you redeeming a gift card. In truth, they hope you forget to ever use it. Let’s say a company sold $100 million in gift cards, didn’t sell one widget of merchandise, and no one ever came in to redeem their cards. By their math, total sales are zero, and yet they’ve got a hundred million bucks in the bank. If they cried about how horrible their sales were, I’d kick 'em in the corporate nutsack.
Gift card sales, according to Bloomberg, roughly totaled $20 billion this year, accounting for 11 percent of all holiday sales. So, they claim that sales are down by 3 percent, but 11 percent of the money spent has yet to be counted? Gimmie a break.