Retail Sales
Categories: Metrics
Sweaters. Underwear. Flat screen TVs. iPhones. Shoes. Designer perfume made from whale...parts. Furniture casings. They're all part of retail sales, and the global and national retail sales numbers are tracked copiously, as they are kind of the canary in the mine shaft of the economy.
When retail starts to soften, everything else softens subsequently, and we head into a slower growth (or no growth) period, usually.
The big elephant in the room? Amazon. Its numbers are included (sorta) in the retail sales numbers, or at least most that are published and then discussed openly by journalists. But for a while anyway, it's hard to tell what up or down numbers really mean, because Amazon is today so much deeper than "just" retail. In fact, they make most of their money hosting, storing, and servicing websites and web elements for big and little business. So they're taking over the world, owning it, and will soon sell everything from cars to life insurance.
Big Brother is here. And he, uh...ate us.
