Retail sales announced today… the numbers are incredibly strong. Ex-gasoline (which is usually removed) sales are up 7% (!!!) year over year.
As you can see this is the fastest growth since 2020.
The labor market seems to be fairly week based on jobless claims, but the consumer is roaring right along. Until this changes, the recovery will continue.
This morning’s retail sales number continues to show how resilient the US consumer is. Here’s a graph of the year over year change in retail sales.
As you can see, we are back to trend in July. Thus, after just 2 months – April of May – of depressed sales, we are back where we started.
This is going to lead to inflation in a lot of industries as the supply chain is broken still. I’ll get back to that next week.