Pages

Thursday, January 12, 2012

2011 Retail Sales

Retail sales for December were reported this morning mostly flat m/m which means that overall retail sales were up 6.5% y/y for 2011.



In nominal terms, it was a pretty good year for retail sales, which hit a new all time high at $4.69T.  It was the 8th largest increase in 18 years since 1993--not bad for a year in which the S&P 500 was flat.  There is quite a difference between nominal and real retail sales though.  Even though Americans are spending more dollars, those dollars are buying them fewer goods.  Real retail sales have still, 4 years later, not reached pre-recession highs.

*Millions of Dollars; Inflation adjustment to December 2011 is estimated



No comments:

Post a Comment

For compliance reasons, I don't post comments to the site, but I do like hearing from readers and am happy to answer any questions. Feel free to use the comment box to get in touch. Please leave an email address in your comment so that I can write back, or email me directly at Skrisiloff@avondaleam.com.