U.S. retail sales gained 0.6% m/m in May. The core components ex autos and gasoline 0.3% and the control group (ex autos, gasoline and building materials) 0.3%. The annual revisions to the retail sales statistic released on May 31 showed a major downward revision to the control group in April, but today’s data revised half of that away. Hence, over the past three months, retail sales ex gas, autos and building materials are up 2.8% annualised. This is a slowdown compared with the start of the year but is not bad taking into account the tax hikes imposed in January this year.
We estimate that nominal personal spending in May increased 0.3% m/m, and with headline inflation running close to 0.1%, real personal spending is likely to have gained 0.2% m/m. Taking revisions to previous months into account, this leaves private consumption growth tracking just below 2% q/q AR in Q2.
U.S. initial jobless claims showed a decline to 334,000 last week, and the four-week moving average dropped to 345,000. This is not the low point of the expansion, but does suggest that job growth is holding up. Our model suggests that initial claims at the current level correspond to job growth of around 170,000 per month.
This data does not give any reason to adjust market expectations that Fed QE tapering could start as early as the September meeting.
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