All charts show the three-month moving average to reduce the monthly squiggles that can obscure the trends. Clearly, consumers are operating on the time-honored principle of YOLO.Īll dollar amounts are seasonally adjusted.

Retail sales by major segment of retailers.Īmong the big retailer segments, the standouts were ecommerce retailers (which include the ecommerce sales of brick-and-mortar retailers, such as Walmart’s ecommerce sales), auto dealers, and bars & restaurants. Consumer spending includes spending on goods at retailers but is dominated by spending on services that retailers don’t sell, and we track this overall spending by our drunken sailors separately and adjusted for inflation. Retail sales are not a measure of “consumer spending.” Consumer spending is far broader than retail sales. Disposable income jumped by 7.3% year-over-year, outrunning goods-inflation of 1.5% by a wide margin. That’s where the money for the additional spending came from.

Combined, total goods inflation rose by 1.5% year-over-year, less than half the year-over-year increase of retail sales of 3.8% (my discussion of CPI inflation, including lots of charts, is here).ĭisposable income outran inflation in goods by a wide margin. The CPI for nondurable goods rose 3.2% year-over-year. The CPI for durable goods has dropped 2.2% year-over-year.

Retailers sell goods, and inflation has shifted from goods (from retailers) to services that retailers don’t sell, and the prices of many goods that retailers sell have dropped. Retail sales outran inflation in goods by a wide margin.

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