Don’t cheer up too quickly. Retail sales ex-autos rose $3.5 billion or 1.2% MoM but $1.9 billion came from higher gasoline sales due to higher gas prices. Ex-cars, gasoline and food, sales rose 0.5% in November after being flat in October.
The Commerce Department said Friday that sales rose a seasonally adjusted 1.3% last month from October. It also revised downward its October results, saying sales increased by 1.1 percent rather than the 1.4 percent originally reported.
November retail sales were up nearly across board. Excluding automobile sales, which increased 1.6% as the hangover from the end of the "cash for clunkers" program dissipated, sales rose 1.2%. Department store sales were up 0.7%. Electronics and appliance store sales were up 2.8%, a jump that may reflect heavy Black Friday sales promotions the day after Thanksgiving. Sales at so-called nonstore retailers, which include catalog and Internet sales, were up 1.2%.
Even with this year’s improvement, November sales, excluding autos, were 3.7% below the level they reached in November 2007, just before the recession began.
While Friday’s data underscore strength in November, weekly gauges for December show more weakness. Sales fell 18% last week from the Black Friday week, according to ShopperTrak RCT Corp. Last year, in the throes of the economic downturn, sales for that same period fell just 14%.
Overall, discretionary spending remains quite weak.
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Full articles in the WSJ and the NYT
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