RETAIL
Holiday Sales Miss Earlier Forecast
Holiday sales in 2018 were a bit of a disappointment.
While holiday sales grew 2.9 percent compared to the previous year, according to the National Retail Federation, the results were down from the 4.3 percent to 4.8 percent the NRF had predicted before the holidays.
U.S. retailers made $707.5 billion during the 2018 season compared to $687.87 billion in 2017, excluding gasoline stations, restaurants and automobile dealers.
Jack Kleinhenz, the NRF’s chief economist, said that analysts were puzzled by the outcome. “Today’s numbers are truly a surprise and in contradiction to the consumer-spending trends we were seeing, especially after such strong October and November spending,” Kleinhenz said on Feb. 14 when the results were released. “The combination of financial market volatility, the government shutdown and trade tensions created a trifecta of anxiety and uncertainty impacting spending and might also have misaligned the seasonal adjustment factors used in reporting data. This is an incomplete story and we will be in a better position to judge the reliability of the results when the government revises its 2018 data in the coming months.”
When initial forecasts were released in October last year for the Nov. 1–Dec. 31 period, Matthew Shay, the NRF’s chief executive officer, said at the time that the U.S. economy was strong enough to push through many of the storms on the horizon. But he changed his tune after the recent holiday sales results.
However, the recent holiday season was good for clothing stores. The NRF said that sales for clothing and clothing accessory stores were up 4.2 percent to $61.7 billion compared to the same period in 2017.
