Advance Retail Sales Additional Month-Over-Month Comparisons
Advance Retail Sales Details
- Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for March 2022, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $665.7 billion, an increase of 0.5 percent from the previous month, and 6.9 percent above March 2021.
- Total sales for the January 2022 through March 2022 period were up 12.9 percent from the same period a year ago.
- The January 2022 to February 2022 percent change was revised from up 0.3 percent to up 0.8 percent. Retail trade sales were up 0.4 percent from February 2022, and up 5.5 percent above last year.
- Gasoline stations were up 37.0 percent from March 2021, while food services and drinking places were up 19.4 percent from last year.
Key Chart Points
- Total Sales: +0.5%
- Gas Station Sales: +8.9%
- Nonstore Sales (e.g. Amazon): -6.4%
- Motor Vehicles and Parts: -1.9%
- Excluding Motor Vehicles: +1.1%
- Excluding Motor Vehicles and Gas: +0.2%
- Food Stores: +1.0%
- Food Service: +1.0%
Consumers spent but that is quite a shift away from Amazon and vehicles towards more on gas.
These numbers are not adjusted for inflation. This was not robust spending despite the overall jump of 0.5 percent.
Going to see this across the board other than perhaps rent where the BLS is behind the curve.https://t.co/LboUU3cvS6
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) April 14, 2022
CPI Rips Higher to 8.5 Percent From a Year Ago, the Most Since 1981
For discussion of the CPI, please see CPI Rips Higher to 8.5 Percent From a Year Ago, the Most Since 1981
As a result of surging inflation, Real Hourly Wages Dive Again in March, Negative for 13 of Last 15 Months
Please note Inflation Has Eaten Up Nearly 100 Percent of Hourly Wage Gains Since 1973
Expect more spending changes as the Fed hikes and home sales plunge. There will be a big decline in demand for appliances, paint, landscaping, and furniture.
Q: What will merchants do with all the inventory they ordered with more on the way?
A: Think discounts
Other than rents, peak inflation year-over-year may be in.
This post originated at MishTalk.Com.
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Mish
finds the FDA is failing to meet American consumers’ expectations on food
safety and nutrition.
By the time FDA officials figured out it was spinach that
was making people sick in 10 states – sending three people into kidney failure
– it was too late. It was mid-November 2021 and the packaged salad’s short shelf
life had passed. There was no recall. By the time FDA officials got inspectors
on the ground, spinach season was over. The fields and the production
facilities were empty, which made it impossible to pinpoint the source of
contamination.
Whatever caused the outbreak was likely never fixed.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. It’s been more than 11 years
since Congress passed a sweeping food safety law designed to prevent this type
of health risk. In that time, FDA has failed to put in place safety standards
for the water used to grow fresh produce, as mandated by that law, despite
knowing that water is one of the main ways fresh fruits and vegetables become
contaminated with deadly pathogens. Congress has ramped up FDA funding over the
past decade, but deadly outbreaks keep happening and it often takes the agency
too long to respond.
Many consumers would be surprised to learn this anemic, slow
response is typical for an agency that oversees nearly 80 percent of the
American food supply, but slow is what insiders in Washington have come to
expect from FDA, regardless of administration. A monthslong POLITICO
investigation found that regulating food is simply not a high priority at the
agency, where drugs and other medical products dominate, both in budget and bandwidth
– a dynamic that’s only been exacerbated during the pandemic. Over the years,
the food side of FDA has been so ignored and grown so dysfunctional that even
former FDA commissioners readily acknowledged problems in interviews.
“The food program is on the back burner. To me, that’s
problem No. 1,” said Stephen Ostroff, who twice served as acting commissioner
of FDA, and held several other senior roles at the agency, most recently as top
food official. When POLITICO called Ostroff for this story, he was so eager to
discuss the agency’s problems, he prepared a laundry list of his concerns.
“There are a lot of things that languish,” Ostroff said.
“There’s nobody really pushing very hard to get them done in the same way that
you’re pushing very hard to get the Covid vaccines out there and authorized. We
don’t have that imperative and that pressure to actually make things happen on
the food side of the Food and Drug Administration.”
….
link to politico.com
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) Builder Application Survey (BAS) data for March 2022 shows mortgage applications for new home purchases decreased 5 percent compared from a year ago. Compared to February 2022, applications increased by 10 percent. This change does not include any adjustment for typical seasonal patterns.
“Mortgage applications for new home purchases increased in March, which is consistent with typical seasonal trends and a sign of strong underlying demand for housing,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “Potential buyers have increasingly looked to new homes as an option, given the lack of existing homes for sale. The average loan size continued to set record highs and reached $436,151. Growth in applications for larger loans continued to dominate application activity.”
Added Kan, “MBA’s estimate of new home sales declined for the fourth consecutive month, with activity down 5 percent compared to February. Elevated home prices, rapidly increasing mortgage rates, and higher costs and supply shortages for building materials are all affecting sales growth.”
MBA estimates new single-family home sales were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 752,000 units in March 2022, based on data from the BAS. The new home sales estimate is derived using mortgage application information from the BAS, as well as assumptions regarding market coverage and other factors.
The seasonally adjusted estimate for March is a decrease of 4.9 percent from the February pace of 791,000 units. On an unadjusted basis, MBA estimates that there were 74,000 new home sales in March 2022, a increase of 12.1 percent from 66,000 new home sales in February.