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Chart of the day: Retail and food service sales for November

Retail and food service sales were down 7.9% from October to November:

This is a sizeable decline, though it's not wildly out of the ordinary. Generally speaking, retail sales have been pretty flat during 2022 with the trendline showing a steady but small decrease.

That said, down is worse than up. November's decline is probably a result of depleted savings and a harbinger that the economy is already slowing a bit.

Note that these figures are seasonally adjusted, so holiday spending is already accounted for.

8 thoughts on “Chart of the day: Retail and food service sales for November

  1. Patricia

    A month-back my cousin's step-mum basically earnt $2,900 just sitting there twelve hours a week in their apartment and they're best friend's mother-in-law`s neighbour has been doing this for nine months and easily made more than $12,000 part-time from their laptop.
    Apply the instructions on this site.. https://payathome.blogspot.com/

  2. skeptonomist

    Looking at the data over a longer term:

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=XGPn

    presents a confusing picture. Why did sales suddenly jump up in early 2021? Does the much higher trend since then mean that people are now on a buying spree? In view of these things the small Oct-Nov change is probably of no significance - within the error of measurement.

  3. rick_jones

    Retail and food service sales were down 7.9% from October to November:

    Were they? Kevin continues/returns to charts with a paucity of data labels, but using MkI eyeballs, October and November were bounded by $700 and $675 billion. Even if October were at the top of that range, and November the bottom, $25 billion out of $700 billion is 3.5%.

    And they weren’t.

    So where did 7.9% come from? Was it perhaps 0.79% instead?

  4. golack

    "Holiday" spending is spreading out. Halloween is being subsumed--talk about a Nightmare before Christmas....
    Lack of workers finally brought some sanity to Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Department stores were basically closed on Thanksgiving day and cut back on the 5AM openings with door buster specials.
    There are sales going on, and there's at least one hard to get item--but no one being stampeded to get to a beanie baby.

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