California Business Minute™

Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.

The U.S. Census Bureau released the advanced estimates of the U.S. retail and
food services sales for December, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday
and trading-day difference, but not for price changes, were $353 billion a
slight decrease of 0.3 percent from the revised figures from November 2009 but
a 5.4 percent increase over December 2008. 

The decline was unexpected signaling continued restrain by the American consumer.

Additionally, and unfortunately, retail sales for 2009 were down by 6.2 percent
from 2008, the biggest decline in the market since 1992.  However, there is a
silver lining as there appears to be some increased activity as retail sales were
up by 1.9 percent from October through December 2009.

The bright spots for the month were increases in home furnishings and gasoline
purchases. Otherwise the sales were similar to November’s activity.

There had been forecasts that sales would be higher.  Americans apparently increased
their use of the Internet as comScore released its annual report on holiday Internet
shopping illustrating that consumers spent 29.1 billion online for holiday related
purchases.  The busiest day for online spending was Tuesday, December 15th at $913
million followed by Cyber Monday at $887 million.  The report identifies that there
were nine days exceeding $800 million of online sales.

I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.