WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) – U.S. retail sales were unexpectedly unchanged in December, putting consumer spending and the overall economy on a \u200bslower growth path heading into the new year.<\/p>\n
The flat reading in \u200cretail sales last month followed an unrevised 0.6% increase in November, the Commerce Department’s Census \u200cBureau on Tuesday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales, which are mostly goods and are not adjusted for inflation, would rise by 0.4%.<\/p>\n
The Census Bureau is still catching up on data releases after delays caused \u2060by last year’s government shutdown.<\/p>\n
Retail \u200chad been strong despite consumers being downbeat about the economy amid higher prices from tariffs and a softening labor \u200dmarket. That has come at the expense of saving, with the saving rate falling to a three-year low of 3.5% in November from 3.7% in October. It \u200bhas dropped from a peak of 31.8% in April 2020. But household \u200cwealth has surged, driven by a strong stock market rally and still-high home prices.<\/p>\n
Retail sales excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services fell 0.1% in December after a downwardly revised 0.2% gain in November. These so-called core retail sales correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of \u2060gross domestic product. They were previously reported \u200bto have advanced 0.4% in November.<\/p>\n
December’s drop \u200band the downward revision to November’s data could prompt economists to trim their fourth-quarter estimates for consumer spending and GDP.<\/p>\n
Consumer \u200dspending increased at a \u2060brisk pace in the third quarter, driving much of the economy’s 4.4% annualized growth pace during that period. The Atlanta Federal Reserve \u2060is forecasting GDP increased at a 4.2% rate in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
The government will \u200cpublished its delayed advance estimate of fourth-quarter GDP next week.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200cLucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) – U.S. retail sales were unexpectedly unchanged in December, putting consumer spending and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,9273,12538,16306,101,28607],"class_list":["post-460592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-census-bureau","tag-commerce-department","tag-consumer-spending","tag-economy","tag-retail-sales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}