– by New Deal democrat
The Bonddad Blog
As per usual, real retail sales is one of my favorite indicators, because it gives so much information about the consumer, and since consumption leads employment, it helps forecast the trend in the latter as well.
And the news this morning was good, as nominally retail sales increased 0.7% in March, while February’s number was revised higher by 0.3% to 0.9%. After accounting for 0.4% inflation in March, real retail sales increased 0.3%, and February was revised up to 0.5%.
To the extent there was bad news, it was that January’s -1.2% decline has still not been completely erased.
To the graphs: first, below I show the historical record for the past 15+ years of both real retail sales (dark blue)
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