Tag Archives: Christmas Season

U.S. online spending set to rise 14.8 percent in 2018 holiday season

FILE PHOTO - A worker gift wraps a holiday order for a customer at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Tracy, California, November 29, 2015. REUTERS/Fred Greaves

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. online spending during the holiday shopping season is likely to grow 14.8 percent this year to $124.1 billion, far outpacing the 2.7 percent growth predicted for brick-and-mortar locations and highlighting the ongoing switch from stores to web shopping.

The forecast was released on Thursday by Adobe Analytics, the web analytics arm of Adobe Systems Inc. The company measures transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. retailers and trillions of customer visits to U.S. retail sites.

Online sales this year will benefit from an extra day between Cyber Monday to Christmas, which is likely to provide a $284 million sales boost, the report said.

Adobe also forecasts the best days for shopping online based on prices across product categories during previous years. For example, Thanksgiving is likely to be a good day to buy sporting goods as prices could be 13 percent lower than their average in the first 10 months of the year. Black Friday will still be a good option for television purchases as prices could be about 22 percent lower.

Apparel discounts could make items cheaper by 22 percent than average on Nov. 25, and toys are likely to be 19 percent cheaper on Cyber Monday, the report said.

The November and December holiday shopping season are critical for retailers, when they book an outsized portion of their annual sales and profits.

Overall U.S. holiday sales including stores and online in 2018 will increase by 4.3 percent to 4.8 percent from a year ago, when consumer spending surged to a 12-year high, according to The National Retail Federation.

The trade body said holiday sales growth will be higher than an average increase of 3.9 percent over the past five years but slower than last year’s 5.3 percent gain, when consumer spending grew the most since 2005, boosted by tax cuts.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

U.S. jobless claims decline from five-month high

help wanted sign in Colorado

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell from a five-month high last week, pointing to labor strength that underscores the economy’s sustained momentum.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 258,000 for the week ended Dec. 3, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were unrevised.

It was the 92nd straight week that claims were below 300,000, a threshold which is associated with a healthy labor market. That is the longest stretch since 1970, when the labor market was much smaller.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast first-time applications for jobless benefits falling to 258,000 in the latest week. Claims hit a 43-year low in mid-November.

Economists had dismissed the recent back-to-back increases in filings, which had pushed claims to a five-month high, as an aberration. Claims tend to be volatile around this time of the year because of different timings of the Thanksgiving holiday.

A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors influencing last week’s data and that no states had been estimated. The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, rose 1,000 to 252,500 last week.

The labor market is near full employment, with the government reporting last week that the unemployment rate fell to a nine-year low of 4.6 percent in November amid solid increases in nonfarm payrolls.

A tight labor market together with signs of a strengthening economy and steadily rising inflation will likely push the

Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at its Dec. 13-14 policy meeting. The U.S. central bank raised its benchmark overnight interest rate last December for the first time in nearly a decade.

Thursday’s claims report also showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid fell 79,000 to 2.01 million in the week ended Nov. 26. That followed two straight weekly increases.

The four-week average of the so-called continuing claims slipped 9,500 to 2.03 million.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao)