Americans may be worried about price increases, but this obviously did not stop them from continuing their holiday shopping this year.
Tuesday, the U.S. Census Bureau The latest retail sales report was released, which found that compared with September, online and offline retail sales in October increased by 1.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis. This number exceeds the same period last year and exceeds 16.3% overall.
The benefits of buying food in grocery stores and restaurants are minimal. Grocery store spending increased by 1.1% from September, while restaurant spending has not changed in the last month. Clothing and personal care products are the only commodity categories that have seen a decline but remain above the level of the same period last year.
Online shopping saw the largest increase at 4.0%, followed by gasoline and construction materials spending, which increased by 3.9% and 2.8%, respectively.
The strong growth in retail sales comes at a time when Americans feel the most pessimistic in a decade, mainly because of rising inflation. Last week, the C of the University of MichiganConsumer Sentiment Index It is found that consumers have felt the most pessimistic since the recovery from the Great Depression in 2011.
Prices have soared due to inflation.Newest Consumer price index with Producer price index Every measurement made by the Labor Department shows that the purchase cost of goods is getting higher and higher, including core commodities such as food and energy.
The reason for the sudden spike in inflation is the bottleneck in the global supply chain and the surge in demand that has been suppressed as the COVID-19 pandemic eases restrictions on shoppers.
The Biden administration and the Federal Reserve have been cautious about rising inflation and have taken measures to deal with it.
Last month, President Joe Biden pledged to reduce ongoing supply chain bottlenecks and reduce transportation backlogs as priorities.He has Announce Establish partnerships with private companies to ensure 24/7 delivery from US ports and bring the goods to the market.
this U.S. Federal Reserve After last week’s quarterly meeting, the billion-dollar monthly asset purchase plan has been cut. Starting this month, the central bank will begin to gradually reduce the additional monthly purchases of 15 billion U.S. dollars.
