U.S. consumers delivered an upside surprise in November, boosting total retail sales by 0.3% over October, and up 4.1% year-over-year. Economists had predicted that sales would decline between 0.1% and 0.2% due to lower gasoline prices.
The news from the monthly report by the Census Bureau echoes earlier findings showing a strong start to the holiday shopping season.
The National Retail Federation’s Retail Monitor sales tracker, reported this week that retail sales, excluding auto and gasoline sales, rose 0.77% over October.
Black Friday Gains
The November gains were driven by strong shopper turnout over the five-day Black Friday shopping weekend, both in stores and online. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), a record 200.4 million people shopped over the weekend, up 2% over last year.
Lea Grgich, NRF research analyst, said this week that the retail group is confident holiday sales for the entire season will end up in line with the NRF’s forecast of between 3% and 4% growth over 2022. While this is lower than the boom spending years of the pandemic, it is in line with the average annual 3.6% growth seen between 2010 and 2019, according to the NRF.
Super Saturday Boost Expected
Retailers also are encouraged by surveys showing many Americans still have a lot of holiday shopping left to do.
The latest Shopify-Gallup Holiday Shopping Pulse survey shows almost half of the consumers, 49%, will do the bulk of their shopping and holiday spending this month. The survey also found that Gen Z shoppers, ages 18-29, are most likely to do all or most of their shopping in December.
Super Saturday, the retail industry’s nickname for the last Saturday before Christmas, is expected to be the single busiest shopping day of the year. This year it falls on December 23, the day before Christmas Eve.
The NRF reported that 142 million people are expected to shop that day.
Heading into the holiday season, most economists and retail executives were bracing for an expected slowdown in spending, but so far consumers have continued to surprise them.
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