EconoFACTS

March 17, 2020 | 09:00

U.S. Retail Sales (Feb. 2020) — At Least Online Sales Rose

Economist

Director and Senior Economist
Economics

Sal Guatieri is a Senior Economist and Director at BMO Capital Markets, with over two decades experience as a ma... (Read more)

Sal Guatieri

Director and Senior Economist
Economics

Sal Guatieri is a Senior Economist and Director at BMO Capital Markets, with over two decades experience as a ma... (Read more)

American consumers already began hunkering down in February and will retrench much further in the current month. U.S. retail sales fell 0.5% (consensus was hoping for a modest gain), dragged down by lower gasoline prices and pretty much everything else, apart from online shopping. The only good news is that January's number was marked up to a 0.6% advance (from 0.3% previously), so we know households were at least out in force before the virus struck. The control measure of sales (ex-food services, autos, gas and building materials) that feeds into the BEA's tally of consumer spending was flat after an upwardly-revised gain of 0.4% in January. While sales at non-store retailers jumped 0.7%, as shoppers were wary of venturing out to traditional stores, spending fell in nearly every other major category. Sales of automobiles, furniture, electronics, building materials, clothing and (not surprisingly) restaurants/bars all posted chunky declines. Even food and drugstore sales were down slightly, though both areas will benefit from stockpiling in early March. Still, personal spending looks to contract in the current month even with earlier stockpiling and juiced online sales, and it will be a close call as to whether overall consumer spending contracts in Q1. Needless to say it surely will in the next quarter, and we have currently penciled in a 5% annualized decline in real GDP for Q2.

Table 1 - United States — Retail Sales

(month/month % change)

Source: BMO Economics, Haver Analytics