Holiday Results Better than First Reported

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Household retail spending perked up in January and was a bit better during the holiday than first reported, according to the latest U.S. retail numbers.

The revised holiday numbers show that the holiday results were close to the 3.5% forecast by MacroSavvy™ for the November-December period.

In January, home improvement, grocery, mass, and online retailers were among the places recording the best month-to-month gains.

Spending generally remained strongest outside of traditional retail stores—especially at auto dealers. Restaurant sales slowed month-to-month, but remain strong year-to-year.

• In January, seasonally adjusted sales excluding autos, food service, and fuel were up 3.7%. That is better than the 3.5% average pace for 2015. These measures exclude gasoline and fuel dealers.
• Sales grew 3.4% for the November-December holiday period on a seasonally unadjusted basis, which was close to the 3.5% forecast by MacroSavvy™. Seasonally adjusted growth for the holiday was 3.1%.

See the table summary for more detail.

Impact @Work: For more on the outlook for 2016, see the article here.