Obamanomics: 2012 Holiday Retail Sales Growth One Sixth of Projected Growth

While holiday growth sales have improved since Obama took office, they’ve taken a dive for the worst this year. Analysts were hopeful that growth might decrease slightly from last year, from 5.6% to 4.1%, but instead, it plummeted to a terrible 0.7%:

WASHINGTON—U.S. holiday retail sales this year grew at the weakest pace since 2008, when the nation was in a deep recession. In 2012, the shopping season was disrupted by bad weather and consumers’ rising uncertainty about the economy.

A report that tracks spending on popular holiday goods, the MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, said Tuesday that sales in the two months before Christmas increased 0.7 percent, compared with last year. Many analysts had expected holiday sales to grow 3 to 4 percent.

The chart above that I amended to show the actual growth is taken from an estimate made in October:

Holiday retail sales will grow 4.1% year-over-year to reach $586.1 billion, forecasts the National Retail Federation (NRF). That rate is down from actual growth in 2011 and 2010 (both at 5.6%), but is above the trailing 10-year average sales increase of 3.3%. The NRF estimate is slightly more aggressive than a recent projection from Deloitte, which predicted 3.5%-4% growth in holiday sales this year.

The actual growth of 0.7% is ONE SIXTH the projected growth of 4.1%. This is especially disconcerting since holiday sales grew at a decent rate in the last two years.

Forward Obamanomics!