Nominal retail sales grew 1.7% m/m, above Bloomberg consensus of 1.4%. With the advance release of sales, and coincident index from the Philadelphia Fed, we have the following picture.
Figure 1: Implied Nonfarm Payroll early benchmark (NFP) (blue), civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept, using smoothed population controls (bold orange), manufacturing production (red), private NFP from ADP (light green), real retail sales (black), freight services index (brown), coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), and GDO (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Retail sales deflated by CPI. Source: Philadelphia Fed [1], Philadelphia Fed [2], Federal Reserve via FRED, BEA 2025Q4 advance release, and author’s calculations.
In order to include a real (inflation adjusted) measure of retail sales, I divided by the CPI. It’s not clear that this is the appropriate measure. As noted elsewhere, retail sales ex-gasoline does not exhibit the jump seen in total retail sales, maintaining the 0.6% m/m pace recorded in February.
Figure 2: Retail sales (blue), retail sales ex-gasoline (red), both in mn.$, on log scale. Source: Census, and author’s calculations.
In March, consumers spend $8.1 billion more in gasoline stations than in February, a 15.5% m/m increase.
Hence, one would want to interpret the retail sales series with caution.
Gasoline hoarding.
So gas prices are up and demand is inelastic because they have no alternative — psychopath CEOs and their return to office BS. Folks gotta get to work somehow, so they just go farther into debt trying to maintain their current standard of living. Sales are up but it’s just making the oil moguls richer and everyone else poorer.