June retail sales: some actual good news; the entirety of the pandemic decline has been reversed
June retail sales: some actual good news; the entirety of the pandemic decline has been reversed
Retail sales are the third report for June out of the four main coincident indicators that show whether the economy is in recession or expansion. And they were the third that grew again for the month. In fact, in real, inflation-adjusted terms they were higher than in February, the last month before the coronavirus pandemic hit:
They were also only 0.4% lower than their all-time high set last August.
And they were also slightly *higher* YoY (0.4%), as shown in the below graph:
Beyond that, over the long haul, real retail sales have been a good if noisy short term leading indicator for job growth:
(Note that real retail sales are divided by 2 for scale in the above graph).
Here’s a close-up of the same since Trump took office:
This is a good omen for the July jobs report. In the past two months, jobs have regained about 1/3 of their pandemic losses. It’s at least within the realm of reasonable possibility that most of the pandemic job losses could be made up within the next two months, even if many States at least partially “re-close” – although brick-and-mortar sales jobs might be replaced by more warehouse and deliver order-fulfilling jobs. And I don’t see how restaurant and bar jobs come back intact for many months to come.
Caution is necessary. While retail sales have increased sharply, my sense in looking to my community is that there have been dramatic changes in the economy that will only gradually be recorded and that will be lasting. Looking to my community and generalizing is problematic, possibly even foolish, but just in retail shopping the changes I see in an upscale community that has fortunately been insulated from the spread of the coronavirus are dramatic.
I am shopping differently, buying different products, so are my neighbors. The very look of shopping centers and shoppers at the centers and the success I have had shopping online, suggests a lasting change.
CGTN @CGTNOfficial
Official data suggests almost 650,000 UK workers have lost their jobs during the #coronavirus pandemic amid fears an employment crisis exceeding that of the 1980s is looming. (Sky News)
11:36 AM · Jul 18, 2020
Does this include online retail?
Since I haven’t been in a store since mid-March, I figured I’d ask.
Kaleberg: yes. “non-store retailers” accounts for about 15% of the aggregate…here’s a table from the report:
https://rjsigmund.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/june2020retailsalestable.jpg
the fifth column on that table compares sales of April, May and June to those of January, February and March & gives us a quick sense of how the change in retail sales will impact the change in 2nd quarter GDP….even though June’s sales were above those of a year ago, nominal retail sales for the three months of the second quarter were down 7.5% from the first three months of this year…that’s a decrease at a 26.8% annual rate, even before the recent month sales are adjusted for inflation, putting us well on our way to the largest quarterly GDP percentage drop on record…
Another reason to be cautious about reading too much into the rebound in retail sales is that not all of it will make it to the bottom line of GDP…for instance, if the increase in auto sales largely came out of inventories of vehicles that were not sold in March and April, the corresponding reduction of inventories will subtract from GDP by the same amount that the increased sales added to it…similarly, if the increased furniture, TVs and clothing sales in May and June came from imported goods, the corresponding imports of furniture, TVs and clothing will subtract from GDP by the same amount that the increased sales of those goods added to it….the only way that increased retail sales adds to GDP without an offset is if it indicates an increase in the amount of goods produced for those sales domestically; in general, goods in that category would include in the increased sales of groceries, gasoline, and building materials…much more important to the ultimate trajectory of GDP will be personal consumption of services, which accounts for 47% of each month’s GDP….here we’d have to know if health care services, transportation services, recreation services and food services and accommodations have increased over the month; indications are they were not; some hospitals were still restricting elective procedures, jet fuel demand was still down by around 60%, no baseball was being played in June, restaurant traffic was still down by a quarter and hotel occupancy was still down by more than a third…
NB: as it turned out, retail inventories were in fact down 6.2% in May, so more than a third of May’s jump in sales came out of inventories, and as i noted, will not make it to the bottom line of GDP…
June retail inventories will not be published until August 14
July retail sales is contraction and will contract again in August.
A Collapse That Wiped Out 5 Years of Growth, With No Bounce in Sight
NY Times – July 30
The coronavirus pandemic’s toll on the nation’s economy became emphatically clearer Thursday as the government detailed the most devastating three-month collapse on record, which wiped away nearly five years of growth.
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced, fell 9.5 percent in the second quarter of the year as consumers cut back spending, businesses pared investments and global trade dried up, the Commerce Department said.
The drop — the equivalent of a 32.9 percent annual rate of decline — would have been even more severe without trillions of dollars in government aid to households and businesses.
But there is mounting evidence that the attempt to freeze the economy and defeat the virus has not produced the rapid rebound that many envisioned. A surge in coronavirus cases and deaths across the country has led to a renewed pullback in economic activity, reflecting consumer unease and renewed shutdowns. And much of the government support is on the verge of running out, with Washington at an impasse over next steps.
“In another world, a sharp drop in activity would have been just a good, necessary blip while we addressed the virus,” said Heather Boushey, president of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive think tank. “From where we sit in July, we know that this wasn’t just a short-term blip. We did not get the virus under control.”
Data from Europe shows what might have been. Germany on Thursday reported a drop in second-quarter G.D.P. that was even steeper than the U.S. decline. But in Germany, coronavirus cases fell sharply and remain low, which has allowed a much stronger economic rebound in recent weeks.
In the United States, the rebound appears to have stalled. More than 1.4 million Americans filed new claims for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the 19th straight week that the tally exceeded one million, an unheard-of figure before the pandemic. A further 830,000 people filed for benefits under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which supports freelancers, the self-employed and other workers not covered by traditional unemployment benefits.
In total, some 30 million people are receiving unemployment benefits, a number that has come down only slowly as new layoffs — many of them permanent job losses, as opposed to the spring’s temporary furloughs — offset gradual rehiring. Some economists now fear that the monthly jobs report coming next week will show that total employment fell in July after two months of strong gains. The slow recovery, and signs of backsliding, are taking a toll on consumer confidence, which fell in July after rising in June.
“Not only have we plateaued, but we may be losing ground,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton in Chicago. “To have these kinds of numbers in July when many in Congress hoped this would be over by summer underscores how unique and persistent the Covid crisis is.”
The economic collapse in the second quarter was unrivaled in its speed and breathtaking in its severity. The decline was more than twice as large as in the Great Recession a decade ago, but occurred in a fraction of the time. The only possible comparisons in modern American history came during the Great Depression and the demobilization after World War II, both of which predated modern economic statistics.
Economists and epidemiologists alike describe the U.S. failure to control the virus during the initial shutdown as a missed opportunity. The government’s efforts at financial support were largely successful: After plummeting in March and April, retail sales rose in May and June as stimulus payments and a $600 weekly federal supplement to unemployment benefits began flowing into consumers’ bank accounts. Loans made under the Paycheck Protection Program allowed small businesses to begin bringing back furloughed workers.
The wave of evictions and foreclosures that many economists predicted early in the recession largely failed to materialize. But those programs have expired or are about to do so. And efforts to extend them have been delayed in Congress by disagreements — between the parties, and among Republicans — about how and how much to spend.
“The lesson from the early policy experiments is that it is possible to support the income of people and to offset those financial constraints,” said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist and a senior fellow at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “But now as of today, we’re not going to have that anymore.”
The up-and-down nature of the recovery is shown by Russian River Brewing Company in Sonoma County, Calif.
Before the pandemic, half the company’s revenue came from retail sales: food and drink at its two brew pubs, tours and tastings at the brewery itself, in-person purchases of bottled beer. When California ordered restaurants to shut down in mid-March, all of that revenue disappeared.
“We were panicking for 48 hours,” said Natalie Cilurzo, who owns Russian River with her husband, Vinnie.
Once the panic passed, the Cilurzos began finding ways to plug the hole. With restaurants shut down, grocery-store sales surged, and online ordering proved to be a hit. A loan through the Paycheck Protection Program helped cover employee salaries and other expenses. And in early June, Russian River was allowed to reopen its brew pubs.
But it has been a partial and uneven rebound. Revenues are back more or less to normal levels, but profits are still down because margins are lower for grocery-store sales. The company has brought back most of its furloughed workers, but it has permanently laid off 20 percent of its staff. And one of its locations had to close again when California reimposed restrictions on indoor dining.
“We’re open, we’re closed, we’re open, we’re closed — we’re kind of in this yo-yo here in California,” Ms. Cilurzo said.
The G.D.P. report shows the severity of the temporary slowdown and hints at evidence of more lasting damage. Consumer spending fell 10.1 percent, led by a near-total collapse in spending on restaurant meals, recreational activities and other services. Even health care spending fell, as patients canceled elective procedures and delayed routine care.
Businesses, too, pulled back sharply on their investments, which Ms. Sinclair said was a worrying sign because it suggested they do not expect a rapid recovery in demand. And trade — both imports and exports — plunged, reflecting the global nature of the pandemic.
There were glimmers of optimism. Spending on goods fell a modest 3 percent, and some quarantine-friendly categories had increases. And while residential construction slumped in the second quarter, more recent data suggests the housing market has experienced a strong rebound, buoyed by low interest rates.
Many economists, however, caution that spending could fall further if Congress reduces or eliminates aid to households and businesses. And it would add to the stress on the unemployed, who are facing the expiration of extra jobless benefits at a time when the virus remains prevalent and jobs remain scarce. …