{"id":2735,"date":"2010-12-23T04:58:42","date_gmt":"2010-12-23T11:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonapollovoss.local\/?p=2735"},"modified":"2018-08-17T08:33:11","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T12:33:11","slug":"surging-holiday-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/12\/23\/surging-holiday-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"Surging holiday sales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Today&#8217;s edition of the New York Times is reporting a rise in this season&#8217;s holiday sales.\u00a0 Specifically the International Council of Shopping Centers is expecting holiday sales to be up 3.5-4.0%.\u00a0 Separately, ShopperTrak reported that traffic was up 3% and that the total dollar value of sales this past weekend, the last before Christmas, were up 5.5%.\u00a0 In absolute dollar terms this is up $18.83 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">You may have shopped online this year.\u00a0 If so you contributed to the 12% rise in online sales this holiday season.\u00a0 Total online sales are estimated by comScore to be $28.36 billion this season.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>Analysis:<\/strong> Because consumer spending is usually around 70% of gross domestic product these figures are good news for the U.S. economy.\u00a0 Hopefully the upsurge in spending by people will increase the confidence of businesses enough to induce them to begin hiring new employees and spending some of those mountains of cash accumulated over the last two recessionary years.\u00a0 Perhaps the &#8220;game of chicken&#8221; that was a major blog theme this year (see <a href=\"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web2010\/07\/20\/a-game-of-chicken\/\">https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web2010\/07\/20\/a-game-of-chicken\/<\/a>) is coming to an end.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">However, a longer running theme, and frankly a more important one is the emergent thrift of the U.S. consumer.\u00a0 By thrift I mean a population of folks who live <em>within<\/em> their means and not beyond them.\u00a0 For the long-term health of the U.S. economy we need a nation that, at worst, spends only what it earns and not more.\u00a0 It is possible to live in a world where the consumer is the back bone of the economy, but that consumer also is thrifty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>Importance grade:<\/strong> 8.5; this surge in sales will buoy the confidence of U.S. retail businesses.\u00a0 Yet, it remains to be seen if that will snap them out of their &#8220;lock down&#8221; on new employee hiring.\u00a0 If so, then this holiday season will turn out to have been just what the economy needed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s edition of the New York Times is reporting a rise in this season&#8217;s holiday sales.\u00a0 Specifically the International Council of Shopping Centers is expecting holiday sales to be up 3.5-4.0%.\u00a0 Separately, ShopperTrak reported that traffic was up 3% and that the total dollar value of sales this past weekend, the last before Christmas, were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}