NRF Flacks Can’t Agree On Whether Holiday Shopping is Strong or Weak

I have my own way of estimating holiday shopping. All over America, photographers spread out on Black Friday hoping to snap pictures of seething mobs. But when I browsed through the shopping pictures on our photo service, I found nothing. Barely even some crowds, let alone mobs. This picture is typical, and I'd say it portends a pretty mediocre holiday season.Richard B. Levine/Levine Roberts via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Here is the LA Times this morning:

Thanksgiving weekend shopping is down.

This year, more than 165 million people shopped from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, which beat the NRF’s expectation of 164 million but fell short of the roughly 174 million who shopped during the same period last year.

The average shopper’s spending total for the holiday weekend was lower this year — $313.29, down from last year’s $335.47….“Almost across the board, people just haven’t been starting their shopping as early this year,” said Mark Mathews, vice president of research development and industry analysis at the NRF.

But don’t give up hope! Here’s the AP story on holiday shopping:

Retail group says holiday season off to a strong start

This year, there were more than 165 million people who shopped online or in stores from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, based on survey results. Last year, that figure was 174 million. The retail group attributed the drop to stores spreading out their deals beyond the Black Friday weekend.

“This was a very strong holiday weekend,” said Bill Thorne, a spokesman at the trade group. The group now says it expects sales for November and December will be at the high end of its earlier forecast of a 4.3 to 4.8 percent rise. That would be below last year’s 5.3 percent increase but well above the average annual increase of 3.9 percent of the past five years.

Everyone agrees that 165 million holiday shoppers were out this weekend, down from 174 million this year. With average spending per person also down, a bit of arithmetic tells us that weekend totals were down 11 percent this year. That’s a big drop, and the NRF’s VP of industry analysis is understandably bummed.

And yet, the NRF’s spokesman is chuffed. Somehow, this decline has him optimistic that total sales for the months of November and December will be up around 4.8 percent. Ka-ching!

So which is it?

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate