“The overall strength in the numbers cannot be overstated, as every retail category was up over December,” Mickey Chadha, a retail analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said in an email. Businesses from auto dealers to department stores, which have struggled mightily to attract customers during the pandemic, showed strong sales growth. After the latest round of stimulus was passed by Congress and signed by President Donald J. Trump at the end of 2020, economists expected that retail sales would increase 1.2 percent in January. But the stimulus money appeared to translate quickly into more spending, rather than savings. “At least half of the stimulus money sent to individuals has been spent already,” estimated Robert Frick, a corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

Source: New York Times February 17, 2021 17:43 UTC