Tuesday , November 5 2024
Home / The Angry Bear / September real retail sales lay another egg

September real retail sales lay another egg

Summary:
September real retail sales lay another egg  – by New Deal democrat One of my favorite indicators, retail sales, was reported for September this morning, and it came in unchanged. Which means that after factoring in +0.4% inflation in September, real retail sales were down -0.4%. Which is not good, because real retail sales have gone nowhere in 18 months, and have been down every single month since April with the exception of August, and are now down -1.4% since then: Furthermore, real retail sales being negative YoY for more than a couple of months has for the past 75 years been an excellent coincident to short leading indicator for an oncoming recession: The only false positives are 1951 and 1966. In September, the YoY change was

Topics:
NewDealdemocrat considers the following as important: , , ,

This could be interesting, too:

NewDealdemocrat writes Real GDP for Q3 nicely positive, but long leading components mediocre to negative for the second quarter in a row

Joel Eissenberg writes Healthcare and the 2024 presidential election

NewDealdemocrat writes JOLTS report for September shows continued deceleration in almost all metrics, now close to a cause for concern

NewDealdemocrat writes Repeat home sales accelerate slightly monthly, but continue to show YoY deceleration

September real retail sales lay another egg

 – by New Deal democrat

One of my favorite indicators, retail sales, was reported for September this morning, and it came in unchanged. Which means that after factoring in +0.4% inflation in September, real retail sales were down -0.4%.

Which is not good, because real retail sales have gone nowhere in 18 months, and have been down every single month since April with the exception of August, and are now down -1.4% since then:

September real retail sales lay another egg

Furthermore, real retail sales being negative YoY for more than a couple of months has for the past 75 years been an excellent coincident to short leading indicator for an oncoming recession:

September real retail sales lay another egg

The only false positives are 1951 and 1966. In September, the YoY change was exactly *0*. Our current situation – of half a year of monthly readings just above or below zero – is very similar to the first half of 2007, and we know how that wound up!

Next, As I note almost every month, real retail sales (/2) are a good short leading indicator for employment. Here’s the long term view from 1993-2019:

September real retail sales lay another egg

To avoid issues with scale, I am skipping the data from 2020 and early 2021. Here is the updated comparison with payrolls since June 2021:

September real retail sales lay another egg

Retail sales continue to forecast a deceleration in monthly payroll gains. Last autumn’s Booming payroll gains are a thing of the past. While there will always be monthly outliers, payroll gains averaging under 0.2% (about 300,000) – and gradually decelerating more – are what we should expect for the rest of this year. 

July real retail sales show more stagnation, but slightly positive YoY,” Angry Bear (angrybearblog.com)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *