I’ve noticed that mall parking lots are full again (last year they weren’t). Maybe Larry is right:
The top White House economic adviser says “everybody agrees the recession is over” even though many experts predict unemployment could climb higher.
Larry Summers says key indicators have shown that the economy is beginning to expand again and that job creation probably will follow. The jobless rate stands at 10 percent.
How do things look from your perch?
With the markdowns out there the retailers will need gigantic volume to make a dime. The old box store adage stack ’em high sell ’em low is a rough road to survival these days.
Not full around here. Maybe a little better than last year, but not by much.
There’s no such thing as a jobless recovery. If you’re supporting the kids or the spouse that can’t find a job that 48″ flat screen is going to have to wait.
the weekend of Black Friday, and it seemed full; however, people seem to be looking more for bargains and staying away from high-end stuff. Hence WalMart and Target are reaping more of the sales, but I still think that people are being careful.
The cuts in some prices boggle the mind; these retailers are really begging for folks to come in and buy, but they’re not really having it, both literally and figuratively.
I got my first temp job in nine months; it’s only for six weeks until mid-January, but I am looking forward to the next assignment. This little drop in the bucket is not enough, but it is welcome just the same. The UI was about to run out completely.
No crowds up until this weekend in stores here like Target and Best Buy, but when we went out yesterday, there were a lot of people shopping. I think they’re waiting for the rock-bottom discounts and a lot of the stores seem to be offering them.
We held off shopping for as long as we could, too. We’ve found some good prices at a local department/clothing store as well as some deals on video games and movies. We’ve also taken advantage of some free shipping offers on things we’ve bought online.
The bargains are out there. The question is, do people have the money to take advantage of them?
I’d say, wait for January. Q4 ’08 numbers will be final and corporations will decide if more layoffs are necessary (they’re probably deliberating on this issue right now through the standard end-of-year budgeting process). Remember, Q1 ’09 was a bloodbath for layoffs.
My husband works retail and thinks that there is a lot more consumer traffic. I agree that there are some serious discounting at these stores, but compared to previous years, there seems to be more people buying. I have to say I was a little surprised by the amount of people in the stores yesterday. My part of the country, central Illinois, hasn’t been hit as hard as other parts, but last year there was hardly anyone in the stores.
I had to go to the nearby WalMart yesterday to pick up my $4 prescription. On the way, I expected to feel stupid about subjecting myself to the mass of shoppers that would be there two weekends before Christmas. But, no. I was able to park three slots from the front door and zip right thru the check-out line. The big stacks of flat-screen tvs, laptops, cameras, etc., were still standing where they’d been put out for Black Friday. The biggest concentrations of customers were in the pharmacy and the grocery section, making only essential purchases. Of course, this part of North Carolina has been in a state of economic depression since before we moved here four years ago…
My wife and i have our little small business that manufactures luxury craft goods to the well-to-do. This year has been brutal, and it shows no sign of getting better. I don’t even want to close the books to see how much the gross is off from the previous year, but I’m guessing apx 20% off from what was already pretty much a substinance way of living. Everyone I talk to in fields similar to ours reports the same.
It ain’t just the little people that aren’t buying, it’s also the wealthy that have almost totally shut down. What this means to us is that we are going to have to make some pretty big changes to survive, because i’m certain that even though things might improve a bit people will never go back to their previous spending levels unless some sort of bubble is created wherein they can make huge profits on investments, or at least feel rich enough to make a purchase they don’t really ‘need’.
I felt like crying when I went to see a machine shop that we’ve worked with for years last week. They are good friends and over the years i’ve visited to see about 30 people or so working, and at times 3 shifts. There were 5 there last week, and they are down to working less than full time and selling off assets to survive.
Brutal, just brutal.
I deal in American paintings (1850-1950), and i just had a huge week of sales, preceded by a year of misery. It’s probably just reflective of the fact that the people who buy my stuff have money, they are not the ones struggling to put food on the table for their family.
eagleye: good news for you indeed. My artist/high end craft friends all say it’s been misery. Let’s hope this is a good sign, and continues.
I’m a fiber artist with some of my work in a local art gallery. I had a couple of sales over the summer and then it went cold. If I didn’t have commissions going, I would be one of those starving artists…
“If I didn’t have commissions going,”
I’m glad you have those, Donnah. Typically we have enough commissions to have our delivery of product to be 1 to 1 1/2 years out. When new commissions weren’t forthcoming last year, we’ve worked down our pending orders to the point of having unsold inventory on hand.
I hope things pick up for you. I have a part time job because I could never survive on my art work alone, but I do get pretty good money for the pieces I make. With a move from just doing shows shows to being in art galleries, I picked up more exposure and interest from a whole other market, and that helped me immensely. I also hope to set up some teaching gigs, which will also give me broader exposure and more dollars.
Hoping things turn around for all of us.
Thanks, Donnah. We might have to get real jobs for the first time in about 15 years, and that would suck, but it seems pretty common for artists in order to get bennies and a steady income.
We’ve done teaching for years, also. Typically 12 students a year, last year it dropped to 4, and I expect it won’t be more this year. Gotta muddle through.
My sister is a potter who sells at art fairs. She said her sales are down about 25 percent for the year. Not devastating, but a big drop — and this is from the previous summer which wasn’t so great either. Her fairs are in WI, IL, IN, MI, MN for the most part. Actually I’m surprised it wasn’t worse.
I usually do all my Christmas shopping online (other than buying some gifts from neighborhood local merchants.) I haven’t been to a mall in at least 10 years as living in downtown Chicago there isn’t any reason to go to a suburban mall. Either way it’s hard for me to know if it’s busier than last year.
I do notice that A LOT more people are eating out compared to this time last year.
Big time restaurants or chains?
Where I live in Chicago it’s pretty much all neighborhood locally owned restaurants. However, there is a pretty big chain of assorted themed restaurants started by Richard Melman from Chicago under the enterprise name of “Lettuce Entertain You”. They seem to be busier too. Truth be told, I really like most of his restaurants with Wildfire being my favorite. You might have one of these in your city as they now are nationwide:
http://www.leye.com/restaurants
Not seeing the crowds here in Chicago. Downtown the streets are as busy as usual, but the stores, not so much. Seems more like sightseeing than buying. In the outlying malls it’s pretty thin — no problem parking, which would be unusual in previous years. Going to non-xmas stores like Loew’s and Home Depot I actually almost feel sorry for them, it’s so lonesome feeling in there. Even Whole Foods is less crowded than I’ve come to expect. A bright spot is that the local Truevalue hardware, my mainstay, says they’re not doing too badly. They’re the ones that would break my heart by going away.
So downtown crowds, still frenzied. Malls have a lot of teenagers walking around but the stores ain’t jumping.
It seems to me that more people are shopping this year than last. I go to Costco every week for certain items and it has been very difficult getting through lately unless I time it just right. There’s a lull between like 2 and 4 PM. Other parking lots around town are looking fuller than last year too.
But a local TV station did their annual all-day food drive for the local food bank this week and they said demand is up six times over last year’s levels, but so are donations.
So the Haves are giving and spending more this year, while the Have-Nots have increased in numbers and can’t give or spend. Retail sales may be up slightly, but I would bet they’ll come in about level with last year.
Pretty average traffic, not a lot, not a little.
But I do notice that some shelves are a bit empty, probably reflecting retailers holding less inventory.
If that’s what it takes for them to make their margins, good for them. It’s not like there’s any lack of choices of products to buy.
my favorite local coffee shop just closed. broke my heart, because it’s the only place where I actually spent money on those kinds of drinks. I’m not a real coffee drinker, but they had teas and smoothies that I came to love, and they would even experiment with me to find the right combination for me. I would be in there at least 3 times a week, and now they’re gone.
the new good Mexican place that opened 2 years ago also closed the same week.
I hate shopping, so I don’t know about how the stores are, but my sister, a Black Belt shopper, says that the stores in our area – we’re in Chicago – aren’t as full as you’d think for this time of the year.
I cut down on my outside dining to once a week. I doubt I’m alone.
the place I miss the most is Borders. I used to be in Borders twice a week; now I’m only there if they send me a good coupon in email.
This barking mad liar is, of course, one of the chief causes of this depression. The worst, by far, is yet to come.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2007/10/imf-mortgage-reset-chart.html
I totally disagree that the worst is yet to come. Those stats are from 2 years ago. A huge percentage of those ARM loans have either a)already defaulted, particularly if they were investment properties as these borrowers didn’t want to keep paying on an underwater investment or b) if not underwater they have already refinanced out of them with mortgage rates at an all time low the entire 2009. Here’s recent mortgage delinquency statistics from 3rd Q 2009.
http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/11172009_transunion_mortgage_delinquencies_still_on_rise_but_at_slo
wer_pace.asp
I’m in the mortgage business and look at this delinquency data daily. Those responsible for keeping the rates low enough to refinance some of these loans in 2009 was critical to helping to get out of this disaster. So while mortgage refinancing of current borrowers is off the charts in volume right now, BofA and Citi and other major servicers have done a HORRIBLE job of approving delinquent borrowers for loan modifications. This has resulted in so many tragic defaults and foreclosures – most of them preventable.
I’m afraid that the mall lots are full because folks are simply using credit again. More debt does not lead to a recovery that is real. Here in Michigan, brutal would be a word I would use to describe our economic situation. So many homes are back in bank hands it is truly scary. Unemployment remains very very high. Folks that find work are getting part time jobs with no benefits. The right to work crowd has succeeded in burying our middle class. All that remains is to observe the long term effect of having a larger and larger percent of the population living in poverty. When Wall Street figures it out, last fall may look like a mild downturn. Oh yeah, Happy Holidays everyone!