Our Drunken Sailors Binge Despite Higher Interest Rates, and the Fed Watches Them Nervously

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

Retail sales by major segment: huge winners (on top: ecommerce and general merchandise retailers), and some big losers.

Total retail sales jumped by 0.7% seasonally adjusted in March from February, after having jumped by an upwardly revised 0.9% in February from January (red line in the chart below). Year-over-year, retail sales jumped by 4.0%.

Not seasonally adjusted (blue line), retail sales jumped 10.1% in March from February to $712 billion. We can see what happened: widespread harsh winter conditions in January added to the normal plunge in January from December. This was followed by a strong bounce in February, when normally retail sales fall further. And then in March, there was another strong bounce as is typical.

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