: (AFP) – US retail sales jumped more than expected in October, bumped up by higher gas prices and auto sales while pointing to resilience in spending in the face of price pressures, according to goernment data released Wednesday.
The uptick came after sales flatlined the month before, as American consumers grappled with surging costs that hae made eerything from groceries to clothing more expensie.
Faced with decades-high inflation leels, the US Federal Resere has rapidly raised its benchmark lending rate this year, including four consecutie super-sized hikes, een at the risk of tipping the world’s biggest economy into recession.
But retail sales in October picked up 1.3 percent from September to $694.5 billion, the Commerce Department reported. This was drien by a 1.5 percent uptick in autos, as well as a 4.1 percent jump in sales at gasoline stations as fuel prices edged up.
Prices at the gas pump surged after Russia’s inasion of Ukraine this year, although they hae eased from a record high and drifted lower in recent weeks.
Sales at restaurants and bars remained resilient too in October, rising 1.6 percent from the month prior, the report showed. The data are seasonally adjusted but do not take into account changes in prices, so as costs rise, a shopping dollar does not stretch as far and American families hae had to use more of their earnings on staple goods and seek out bargains.
Oerall, retail sales were 8.3 percent higher than in the same month of last year. Despite signs of trouble in the tech industry, including layoffs and ecommerce giant Amazon, sales at online retailers increased 1.2 percent last month.
Apart from rising prices, “people hae chosen to draw down on saings accumulated during the pandemic to maintain consumption, despite significant pressure on real incomes,” said Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics in a recent analysis ahead of the report.
He expects the process can “continue for some time yet” as excess personal saings from the Coid-19 period still stood at $1.3 trillion in September. “Whether people are willing to run down saings further, howeer, is less clear,” he said.
