Commerce Department: Retail Sales Fell 0.3% in December
Reuters is reporting that the Commerce Department's data shows December sales fell 0.3%. Major discounting near the end of the year likely played a role in the decrease. Analysts had been expecting sales growth in December.
Analysts had expected an increase of 0.5 percent, but disappointment was tempered by upward revisions to prior months' data. November sales were revised to show a 1.8 percent gain from an initially reported 1.3 percent increase, and October sales were bumped up a touch as well.
A separate report from the Labor Department showed initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 11,000 to 444,000 last week, higher than the 437,000 claims analysts surveyed by Reuters had forecast.
"Will consumers be able to take over from the government and replace demand that has come so far from government spending? If the consumer is unable to do that, it's going to pose some significant risks to the recovery story," said Boris Schlossberg, director of research at GFT Forex in New York.
Nothing has changed since last year. Investors portfolios may be a little bigger thanks to growth in the stock market in 2009 but it is still going to next to impossible for retail sales to grow very much without job creation.
