U.S. retail sales rose 0.3% in November compared to the previous month, the Commerce Department said Thursday, despite the Dow Jones estimate that sales would decline by 0.1%.
The 0.3% estimated increase in U.S. retail and food service sales outpaced inflation from October to November, which was 0.1%. The retail sales are also up 4.1% when compared to the same time last year, the department said, which is still above the inflation rate of 3.1% from November 2022 to November 2023.
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Online prices soared to record highs in November, according to Adobe Analytics.
Prices online surged 3.5% on a year-over-year basis as of November, the biggest increase since 2014, when Adobe started tracking the cost of goods on the internet and the 18th consecutive year of online inflation, according to the Adobe Digital Price Index (DPI). Prices on a month-to-month basis dropped 2% due to holiday discounts, according to Adobe.
“Census Bureau data shows that the e-commerce share of non-fuel retail spending has tripled over the last decade as more expenditures like groceries and home improvement move online,” Marshall Reinsdorf, former senior economist at International Monetary Fund, said in the report.
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