Holiday Retail Sales Soared, With Biggest Increase Since Recession
“We knew going in that retailers were going to have a good holiday season,
but the results are even better than anything we could have hoped for, especially given the misleading headlines of the past year,” Matthew Shay, the president and chief executive of the National Retail Federation, said in a statement.
Retail sales during November and December increased 5.5 percent, to about $692 billion, from
a year earlier, according to data released Friday by the National Retail Federation.
According to an analysis by First Data, the payments company, holiday e-commerce sales
increased 10.4 percent, compared with growth of 4.0 percent in brick and mortar sales.
While much of the destruction occurred before the holiday shopping season, it most likely took time before insurance money
and disaster aid began to find its way into consumers’ pockets.
It was the largest increase in holiday sales since the recession of 2008, exceeding
the federation’s forecast of $682 billion, or growth of about 4 percent.