On Yahoo there is the headline “Feb. retail-sales report provides hope for economic recovery.” From the article:
Retail sales posted a surprising increase in February as consumers did not let major snowstorms stop them from racking up purchases. The advance, the biggest since November, provided hope that the recovery from the Great Recession is gaining momentum…
For February, sales rose 0.3 percent, the Commerce Department said Friday. That surpassed expectations that sales would decline 0.2 percent…
“Weak jobs growth, low wages growth and tight credit mean that any further acceleration in consumption growth is unlikely,” Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note.
Still, the February gain suggested that consumers are spending more freely than they were a few months ago.
Of course in between the ellipses was this tidbit: “The increase for January was revised down from 0.5 percent to 0.1 percent.”
As Calculated Risk points out:
January was revised down sharply. Jan was originally reported at $355.8 billion, an increase of 0.5% from December.
February was reported at $355.5 billion – a decline without the revision to January.
January has been revised down to $354.3 or an increase of 0.1% from December.
So uh, the “hope” for economic recovery and “surpassing” expectations was actually to bring us lower than we thought we were. Needless to say I am not enthused. It should also be noted that the methodology is same store only and does not take into account price changes. Thus, with lots of stores closing, the ones that remain open can see increases but lead to an overall decrease in sales…which would shop up as a rise in the official statistics. Something is happening, since reported numbers are diverging more and more from tax receipts and polls about spending. It should be noted that the Gallup poll cited in the last link is about discretionary spending, so the drop isn’t nearly as big as they show in overall spending.