In late November, I covered the matter of Black Friday sales beginning earlier and earlier and wondered if that would affect the retail market numbers after the holiday season.
A report on holiday spending by Mastercard Inc., revealed that retail spending in the United States increased 5.5 percent year-over-year from the Thanksgiving weekend through Christmas Eve.
Fox Business reports that consumers spent actively on lodging and restaurants during the holiday season, while sales of electronics were flat, reflecting an ongoing shift toward spending on “experiences” rather than goods.
As far as the U.S. economy goes for 2015, Market Wired reported that Dun & Bradstreet’s January 2015 U.S. Economic Health Tracker (which provides a monthly, multidimensional perspective on the U.S. economy, including small business health, total job growth, and overall U.S. business health) showed small business health continued to have small though steady gains, but overall U.S. business health remained stagnant in the second half of 2014.
Josh Peirez, chief operating officer at Dun & Bradstreet, told Market Wired that there are some definite bright spots in the U.S. economy, such as increased viability for businesses overall and the sustained health of Main Street. But, taken all together, business conditions appear to have stalled, and the firm estimates prolonged hesitant growth headed into the first quarter of 2015.
Let’s just hope that this is the year for consumers, retailers, businesses and job growth and that we can only build from here.
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Denise DeChaine is special projects editor of Institutional Real Estate, Inc.
