December Retail Sales Were Very Strong, Despite The Misleading Headlines

December Retail Sales Were Very Strong, Despite The Misleading Headlines

Shoppers walk past an Armani store on Fifth Avenue in New York, U. S., on Monday, Dec. 27, 2021. ... [+] Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg The US Commerce Department released its monthly retail sales report this morning and, within minutes, my social media feed lit up with gloom and doom takes on the alleged sorry state of shopping. Various news outlets ran negative headlines like "US Retail Sales Fell 1. 9% in December." Much of the commentary included the suggestion that sales were "below expectations." There is so much wrong in all of this, it's hard to know where to start. But I'll try. I have been in retail for 30 years, both as a senior executive at two Fortune 500 retailers and as a consultant/analyst. I'm hard pressed to name one person whom I respect who pays much attention to month-over-month numbers. What we pay a lot of attention to are the year-over-year numbers (and more recently, because of COVID, the so-called two-year stack). Note: Jason Goldberg (aka the "Retail Geek" ) often unpacks this report in detail on his podcast and I have done so in a less comprehensive way on mine. So how do those results look