NOVEMBER 28, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2015, 1:21 AM
BLOOMBERG NEWS |
WIRE SERVICE
Could Americans be losing their holiday spending spirit? More than 20 years of retail sales data suggest it’s a distinct possibility.
U.S. retailers have come to rely on a shopping frenzy toward the end of the year, as the annual gift-giving season compels people to open their wallets. That holiday bump, though, appears to be shrinking.
Last year, December’s share of annual retail sales (excluding gasoline) amounted to 9.9 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That compares with a high point of 10.6 percent in 1993 — a difference worth more than $30 billion. Although the holiday boost tends to fluctuate with economic cycles, the trend is down. Here’s how that looks:
What’s going on? Black Friday could be partly responsible, if retailers have pulled some of the holiday action into November with deep discounts and special opening hours. However, that particular shopping event is on the wane. And even combining sales for November and December doesn’t do much to change the long-term trend.
Another potential explanation is that the kinds of items people buy around the holidays — Xboxes, iPads and the like — have become relatively cheap, because of the efforts of Chinese manufacturers. This would make the dollar value of December’s spending look smaller, even if people were purchasing just as many items. That said, prices on imports from China are higher than they were a decade ago, so maybe not.
There’s also a more troubling possibility: Declining incomes may have left a large portion of Americans less willing to splurge. The median U.S. household income has fallen more than 3 percent over the past decade in inflation-adjusted terms. December’s share of spending tends to suffer when budgets are tighter, as evidenced by the sharp drop during the 2008 recession.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/holiday-shopping-frenzy-on-the-wane-1.1464053