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In the United States, retail sales fell more than expected in the last month of the year 2021. A 1.9% was what decreased the value of total sales, this figure means the greatest decrease in recent 10 months. According to Bloomberg, this suggests that inflation is greatly affecting consumers.
According to the Department of Commerce, if the drop in consumption in December was of 1.9%, in November a decrease in consumption of 0.2% was reported. That’s why I didn’t expect it to be so low this time.
Rather the estimates assumed, quite low with a 0.1% drop in retail sales, so the 1.9% is surprising.
What worries the experts is that this is going to be transferred a little to the first quarter of 2022. Economists’ forecasts indicate that household spending will decrease. It is already evident that trips and outings to public places are going to decrease due to restrictions in view of the rapid reach of the Covid variant, Omicron.
A more moderate pace of spending is definitely expected for 2022 due to falling wages adjusted for prices, the end of government financial programs, less chance of saving.
Fall in retail sales by category
– Retailers without stores, in the category of electronic sales had a slump of 8.7% last month alone.
– Department store sales fell by 7% in December. And in November they had fallen by 5.5%.
– Sales in restaurants and bars, of the services category, fell by 0.8% in December, after having improved in November.
– Regarding cars, vehicle sales fell by 0.4%. The manufacture of them had problems throughout the 2021, due to the lack of parts and chips. In this area, in December the numbers show a drop of 2.5%, excluding gasoline and cars.
On the other hand, the sales of what they call “group of control” , those that are used to calculate the gross domestic product, fell by 3.1% in the month of December, if we compare it with November. It continues to be the biggest drop since February.
Omicron has been one of the main causes of this drop in retail sales. Already before the end of December 2021 the statistics indicated that consumption in stores had fallen by 26% compared to the previous year.