The final accounting won’t be available for a couple of weeks, but indications are that 2010 holiday retail sales across the United States are so robust that they could approach or even beat 2007 sales — the best recorded. That’s positive news for retailers and for economic gurus who view the string of numbers as an indication that the nation’s economic outlook continues to brighten. That welcome optimism, however, must be tempered by the financial concerns expressed by many worried consumers.
The National Retail Federation predicts that the 2010 holiday retail season — which officially runs from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 — will produce about $451.5 billion in sales. That would be an increase of more than 3 percent over 2009. If that’s the case, it would be the biggest increase since 2006 — and the highest total since the record $452.8 billion in sales in 2007. Given high shopper traffic counts in the days since Christmas, many retailers say breaking the sales record is a possibility, despite a blizzard that shut down many stores along the East Coast earlier this week.
Such optimism is understandable. Holiday sales were strong from the outset and picked up steam as Christmas Day neared. Both brick-and-mortar and Internet retailers reported gains. Sales were broad-based, not limited to a few categories. Clothing sales, for example, rose more than 11 percent. Consumer electronics, home furnishings, jewelry and luxury good sales — all affected negatively during the Great Recession — increased as well, though they did not reach pre-recession levels. Shoppers, retailers report, generally were in a mood to spend, a notable change from 2008 and 2009.
That renewed willingness to spend during the holidays is a sign of underlying economic resilience. Consumer spending, experts say, accounts for about 70 percent of all economic activity in the United States. Thus, record or near-record spending this year indicates a recovering rather than a stagnant or falling economy.
Even so, economic signals remain mixed. Consumer confidence declined in December because of worries about jobs and the housing market, according to a report from the Conference Board, a private research group that produces the Consumer Confidence Index. The index dropped to 52.5 this month, down from 54.3 in November. The index rose in both September and October. The decline, however, is viewed by most economists as a temporary blip rather than an indicator that future economic activity will decline.
Indeed, most economists remain optimistic about the retail outlook for the coming year, and understandably so. Despite the worries recorded by pollsters this month and a continuing high level of unemployment due to sluggish job growth, their general feeling is that shoppers’ actions rather than their thoughts are a more reliable measure of the nation’s future economic health. If that’s the case, the best holiday retail sales figures in five years suggest an economy and a marketplace on the rise rather than struggling to stay afloat.