Despite threats, signs from job gains suggest the economic outlook may improve from a modest start to the year. The job gains, however, remain skewed toward Western and some Southern states and metro markets. The threats to the outlook are coming…
Spending confidence among Millennials remains on a strong upward trend—leading consumers’ overall confidence to spend higher in June. Clothing, health and beauty are benefitting most among categories from the confidence trends. Homegoods also show mixed signs of opportunity among generations. The…
The U.S. retail sales trend in 2018 suddenly looks stronger as a result of a healthy month of May and upward revisions to prior months as reported by the government. Sales are up about 4.5% year-to-year for the first five months….
The outlook for consumer spending remains tepid as confidence to spend over the next 90 days again moved sideways in May—with Millennials showing the only notable sign of improvement. As a result, retail spending should keep to the slower pace that…
Outside of ecommerce sales, furniture and furnishings is a lone bright spot among retail spending that is settling back into a modest pace of year-to-year growth in the wake of a strong holiday. Ecommerce sales are sustaining strong growth of 15%…
The U.S. economy slowed in the first quarter of 2018, driven to a large extent by a big slowdown in consumer spending. The results confirm a post-holiday return to less robust consumer spending (more here) and raise some concern about the…
Millennials pulled down consumers’ confidence to spend in April—with the food and clothing categories taking the brunt of weaker spending confidence. The latest results tend to confirm that a brief Spring burst of confidence in the wake of tax cuts is…