The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday December 2 that the retail trade sector hired 423,500 more workers in November effectively a return to pre-recession levels for those jobs.
Tomorrow we will release retail sales data for November amid a steady drumbeat of news stories about holiday shopping. These stories beg the question of just how important sales are during the holiday season -- for overall consumer spending as well as for specialty stores. The short answer is that total retail sales (excluding motor vehicle sales) tend to creep up about 3 percent every year between September and October (bearing in mind that September tends to be in a bit of a post-summer lull). The upward creep continues at a bit over 4 percent in November, and then sales spike 17 percent in December.1 Putting these results in a different light, i
A recently released Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD) forecast suggests that the Euro area economies have already fallen into recession. This is likely to affect U.S. goods exports. Has this expected effect shown up in the data yet? Currently, it is difficult to tell when this effect may be occurring because the country export data are not adjusted for seasonal changes.
