Case Western Reserve University
The Economic Impact of Coronavirus
City Club of Cleveland: Sue Helper, a professor of economics and Jack Kleinhenz, an adjunct professor—both at the Weatherhead School of Management—weighed in on the immediate and long-term negative economic consequences of multi-pronged efforts to decelerate the spread of COVID-19.
https://www.ideastream.org/programs/city-club-forum/the-economic-impact-of-coronavirus
Times Call
The nation’s leading business economists are growing more pessimistic by the day about the chances for a sharp rebound from what they call an economic shock unlike any the country has ever seen.
“I won’t candy coat the outlook. It is obvious we will see a severe contraction,” Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist of the National Retail Federation, said on a conference call hosted by the National Association of Business Economics on Monday.
Initially, the hope was that the U.S. economy might quickly rebound once infections declined, restrictions on movement were lifted and fiscal stimulus kicked in. That was the V-shaped recovery scenario. Then economists began talking about a more stretched out or U-shaped recovery as cases rose, unemployment claims spiked and California, New York and Illinois locked down their populations. Denver County on Monday joined that group, ordering its residents to shelter-in-place as of 5 p.m. on Tuesday, before loosening up the rules to let people continue to visit liquor stores and recreational marijuana dispensaries after those were hit with a rush of shoppers. The city of Boulder also issued a stay-at-home order on Monday.
“It will not be a V-shaped recovery. It won’t even be U-shaped. It will be L- or hockey-stick shaped,” said Yelena Shulyatyeva, a senior U.S. economist with Bloomberg. “It is not a temporary situation. It will stay with us for some time.”
Chinese consumers cut spending by 20% during the country’s lockdown, but the U.S. is facing a contraction of 30% or more, said Kleinhenz. Consumer spending accounts for about 70% of the U.S. economy and businesses are rapidly jettisoning workers rather than trying to ride the storm out.
As for a path back to normal, “We don’t have a road map to do that,” Kleinhenz said.
Colorado, despite having one of the more diversified state economies, also has a heavy concentration of jobs in tourism and oil and gas, another industry that could see layoffs soon if there isn’t a rebound in prices, which are down by two-thirds from the start of the year. Demand for oil has fallen 10% in three months. The last time it fell that much was in 1979, and that decline happened over three years, said Mark Finley, a fellow at the Baker Institute Center for Energy Studies.
At the same time as demand is dropping, Russia and Saudi Arabia are ramping up production in a price war. Once storage capacity fills up, prices could see another wave down unless the two countries reach an agreement to cut production, Finley warned.
The study didn’t include retail as a high-risk category, but brick-and-mortar retailers in the state, who employ an additional 272,200 workers, are shutting down operations. Belmar in Lakewood said it was closing down at 7 p.m. on Monday and would reopen on April 6.
“Thank you for your understanding as we move through these unprecedented times together,” the outdoor mall said in a release.
On Sunday night, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard told Bloomberg in an interview that U.S. GDP could be cut in half in the second quarter. Those kind of declines are associated with a depression, not a recession.
“This is a planned, organized partial shutdown of the U.S. economy in the second quarter. The overall goal is to keep everyone, households and businesses, whole” with government support. It is a huge shock and we are trying to cope with it and keep it under control,” he said.
When asked whether the current situation resembled the Great Depression, a member of the NABE panel said it didn’t. As long as the financial system holds up, which it appears to be doing thanks to massive intervention by the Federal Reserve, then the country should avoid a depression, said Ken Simonson, chief economist with the Associated General Contractors of America.
“We haven’t had banks closing all over the country. We have a much more robust financial safety net,” he said. “We are not in for 10 years of declining or subdued activity.”
Another sign that employers are losing hope for a fast rebound in the economy — they are laying off their workers in large numbers rather than waiting out a temporary disruption. Research consistently shows that employers who aggressively cut staff in response to a downturn harm their long-term prospects much more than those who grit it out, said Wayne Cascio, a distinguished professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver, an expert on the topic.
“Employers should do as much as they can to avoid cutting people with mission-critical skill,” he said. “The longer they can hold out before taking drastic action, the better off they will be.”
But he also acknowledges the country has never faced a shutdown on a scale it is now seeing. Many of the first wave of layoffs are coming in industries that pay lower wages and have higher turnover. Workers in hospitality and retail are more likely to be viewed as easily replaceable rather than mission-critical. Yet, the severity and swiftness of those layoffs will reverberate throughout the economy, and delay any recovery.
Last week, the Colorado Department of Labor strained to process 26,000 claims for unemployment benefits, and many displaced workers said they were blocked from filing. On Monday morning, the department fielded 86,000 calls before the phone queue opened at 8 a.m., noted executive director Joe Barela. A week ago, there had been 9,000 calls before the queue had opened.
“All of our systems are overloaded — as are UI systems across the country — and we know frustration and anxiety is high. We are doing the best we can to navigate these uncertain times and want claimants to know their benefits will not be reduced due to any filing delays,” he said in an update sent by email.
It will take several weeks for official measures to capture what is happening this month. But surveys are showing massive job losses that are causing consumer confidence to quickly evaporate. Maintaining that confidence was key for any V-recovery.
LendEDU surveyed 1,000 adults in the U.S. and found that 6% said they had already lost their job because of the COVID-19 outbreak, while 11% had retained their jobs but weren’t working, making them likely candidates for a future layoff. Another 13% had their work hours reduced. The survey also found that among those who had lost work, 82% said they were living paycheck-to-paycheck. They have no reserves to fall back on.
Homebase, which provides an online system for tracking employee work hours, reports a 40% drop in Denver-area business clients still open as of Sunday, and a 53% decline in the number of workers clocking in on its system.
Lower, slower income tax refunds that have dragged on retail sales this year are disproportionately hurting upscale stores, since high-income shoppers are more likely to get an unexpected bill from the Internal Revenue Service under changes backed by President Trump and congressional Republicans.
February revenue at U.S. retailers fell 0.2 percent from the month before to $506 billion, the Census Bureau said Monday, and merchants placed much of the blame on cold weather, stock market fluctuations, and shrinking refunds after a GOP-led tax overhaul that eliminated or cut many of the deductions once claimed by people earning $100,000 a year or more.
Those changes, and Treasury Department efforts to buoy take-home pay through adjustments to withholding tables, left some taxpayers getting little to no money back from the IRS and often having to make surprise payments.
“We see the most risk to households in the upper-income demographics, particularly those that live on the coasts, as they likely get impacted” by limits on state and local tax deductions, said Michael Lasser, an analyst with Swiss lender UBS. That weighs on retailers such as Restoration Hardware and Williams-Sonoma, while leaving discount stores such as Walmart unfazed, he said.
It’s “something that we’re watching closely,” Jack Preston, senior vice president for finance at Corte Madera, Calif.-based Restoration Hardware, told investors and analysts last week. “We’ve heard anecdotes of people being surprised with the tax bills as they prepare their tax returns.”
Overall, however, store owners remain optimistic about the rest of 2019, according to the National Retail Federation, which represents businesses contributing $2.6 trillion a year to the U.S. economy. The group’s chief economist, Jack Kleinhenz, noted that original estimates for January sales were revised upward and that online merchants saw gains compared with both the previous month and February 2018.
“The consumer has not forsaken the economy as some previously claimed,” he said in a statement. “We still expect growth to pick up, fueled by strong fundamentals like job and wage growth.”
The jobless rate remained at 3.8 percent in February, near a 50-year low, and average hourly pay grew 3.4 percent to $27.66, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Though many American industries have ramped up hiring in recent years amid a strong economy and easier regulations under President Donald Trump, one sector in particular has lagged the rest: retail.
Since January 2017, retail has lost more than 140,000 jobs; the sector added to that in March 2019 with a loss of more than 11,000, according to Labor Department data. The sector is one of just two industries that have lost jobs over the last few years, according to data tracked by CNBC.
For example, an aging baby boomer population has fueled employment in the health-care industry, while the post-crisis business sector has supported the addition of tens of thousands of jobs per month. The government’s Friday report on the employment situation showed the health care sector alone added 61,000 jobs in March, while the business industry tacked on another 37,000.
Despite strength in jobs from manufacturing to medicine, retail is one of just two sectors that have lost jobs over the last few years. Since January 2017, retail has lost more than 140,000 jobs; the sector added to those losses in March 2019 with a loss of more than 11,000, according to Labor Department data.
The lukewarm performance in the retail sector have come despite a broader economic groundswell, with Trump’s corporate tax cuts giving businesses a balance sheet boost, goosing GDP growth above the rate many economists feel is sustainable.
The utilities sector, the only other to have seen a net decline in jobs since 2016, employs less than 1 million people. Retail employs more than 15 million.
Theories on the employment softness range from analyst to analyst, most agree that the downtick in the number of people working at big-box retail locations has to do with the rise of e-commerce and technology.
“Broadly speaking, retail is a sector where automation has been particularly present. Self-checkouts are now common. If you’re not sure about a price, you scan the bar code rather than asking a worker,” Nathan Sheets, chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income.
As an example the thriving shift toward automation at retailers nationwide, Walmart announced earlier this year that it is expanding its “Scan & Go” technology to an additional 100 locations across the U.S. For consumer staples like groceries that customers still don’t feel comfortable purchasing online, Kroger’s new “Scan, Bag, Go” platform will allow shoppers to scan their items themselves and allow the chain to cut cashiers at 400 locations.
Gap, Victoria’s Secret, J.C. Penney, Tesla and Abercrombie & Fitch have all announced that they’ll be closing locations in 2019; 4,810 store closures had been announced by retailers by March 2019, according to Coresight Research.
The push toward automation checkouts comes as major retailers and supermarkets come under pressure to generate even more profit out of a razor-thin margin business while offering customers a unique shopping experience.
“As a related point, the ongoing shift in retail from bricks and mortar to online very much reinforces this trend. For online sales, you largely eliminate customer-facing employment,” Sheets added. “U.S. consumers have manifest over many years that they want low prices, even if that means less help from workers on the floor.”
Perhaps emblematic of the struggles of some retailers to keep up in the modern era, the October bankruptcy filing of Sears Holdings represented for many economists a key moment in the shift toward a leaner business model.
Others, like National Retail Federation chief economist Jack Kleinhenz suggested that the government data may not suggest a decline in retail business, but rather a shift in the types of people they employ.
“You could now have a major retailer that owns a warehousing and distribution center, and products never go through a store,” Kleinhenz said. “There has been improvement in productivity and the use of technology. I caution us to be unnerved by these numbers at this point in time.”
“The retail industry is actually in sync with the economy and is growing at a pace that is appropriate, but we have to broaden our scope” of how we measure it, he added.
Instead of employees lining up at brick-and-mortar store locations, the rise of e-commerce is driving demand for transportation and warehousing staff. A current driver shortage beleaguers the trucking industry thanks to a combination of low compensation, burdensome schedules and conditions of the job.
But amid a new generation of consumers accustomed to smartphone shopping and two-day shipping, retail demand for storage square footage is soaring. Some savvy investors, such as Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray, have actually poured money into the warehousing business in an effort to preempt the broader trend and capitalize off the scaling need for space.
Gray told CNBC in July that the firm had purchased more than 550 million square feet of warehousing since 2010.
“As you think about investing, you’re trying to think about sort of where the puck’s going to, what’s happening. We came to a simple view that online sales were going to grow,” Gray said from the Delivering Alpha Conference in New York in 2018. “As a result, we’ve seen this pickup in demand for warehouse space, which traditionally was a pretty boring business.”
“In an environment where it’s hard to invest, finding things you have high conviction in, where you think there’s going to be growth – that’s a pretty good strategy,” he added.
According to numbers released last week by the Department of Labor, retail is one of the few industries losing jobs in a generally stable economic climate.
Retail employment in March was down by 11,700 jobs, seasonally adjusted from February, and down 47,400 jobs unadjusted year-over-year. The United States saw a monthly gain of 196,000 jobs overall (across all industries) in March.
National Retail Federation (NRF) chief economist Jack Kleinhenz, for one, said the numbers don’t paint an accurate picture of the industry. In a statement from the NRF, the economist said the overall growth in employment “paints a picture of resiliency of the U.S. economy” and that “consumer confidence and consumer spending were down earlier in the year, so the retail numbers likely reflect merchants’ hesitancy to add to payrolls under those conditions.”
That may be, but it’s notable that retail has posted job losses for three solid months: Since January 2017, the industry has lost more than 140,000 jobs (including 18,500 jobs in February), according to the Department of Labor.
A confluence of factors is impacting retail’s job growth, say industry watchers. Among them is the downsizing of retail—led by the continued closing of big box and department stores—and an increase in automation, which may be shifting retail’s jobs away from stores and into technology and other back-of-house jobs.
Kleinhenz told CNBC, “You could now have a major retailer that owns a warehousing and distribution center, and products never go through a store. There has been improvement in productivity and the use of technology. I caution us to [not] be unnerved by these numbers at this point in time.”
Overall unemployment in March was 3.8 percent, unchanged from February.
JCK the Industry Authority
There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and, apparently, retail statistics.
A recent U.S. Department of Commerce retail report showed non-store sales eclipsed general merchandise sales by a narrow margin in February, a first in the history of the government agency tracking such data. News reports on the data said e-commerce had trumped brick-and-mortar retail for the first time. But hold up, retail experts say. Most peg e-commerce to account for between 10% and 12% of all retail sales, with brick-and-mortar making up the rest. Experts Bisnow spoke to unanimously agreed on the recent wave of triumphant e-commerce headlines: fake (retail) news. “The best way to explain it is describing your car and only talking about the tires,” JLL Americas Retail President and CEO Greg Maloney said. “It’s a total misrepresentation of general retail sales and zeroing in on something insignificant that doesn’t tell the story in order to glorify a headline.” The problematic reporting stems from how the Department of Commerce labels retail categories. Non-store sales include online sales, but the category also includes other retail sectors like vending machines and mail-order catalogs. General merchandise, despite the widespread-sounding term, is only a portion of brick-and-mortar sales and excludes automobile sales and food and beverage transactions. Comparing general merchandise to non-store sales as a proxy for brick-and-mortar retail to e-commerce transactions isn’t a fair fight. “Non-store sales are not a true measure of pure e-commerce sales,” National Retail Federation Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. “This just suggests more work needs to be done in better understanding data and what these terms mean.”
The Commerce Department also revises the numbers each month, and there is a good chance the razor thin margin (non-store sales were 11.813% of sales compared to general merchandise’s 11.807% of February retail sales) will change in favor of the brick-and-mortar subset, according to Kleinhanz. “The way it was reported is misleading, and it makes some people scared,” Bialow Real Estate CEO Corey Bialow said. “By no means are online sales surpassing brick-and-mortal retail sales.” Bialow, who is the exclusive broker for digitally native men’s suit brand Indochino across the U.S., still estimates about 12% of all retail sales are made online. But he and other retail experts expect the figure to grow in coming years as younger generations gain more purchasing power. That doesn’t mean the growth will lead to the total demise of brick-and-mortar retail. Plenty of sales made on retailers like Best Buy or Lululemon’s websites were because customers tried the products out in stores first. It just means an omnichannel presence, both online and brick-and-mortar, will be key to courting customers. “Brick-and-mortar is still an integral part of the online shopping experience,” Bialow said. “Amazon aside, most retail sales are being done by omnichannel retailers.”
The overlooked part of the Commerce Department report is how brick-and-mortar and online sales are converging, according to those Bisnow spoke with for this story. Digitally native brands are expanding into brick-and-mortar venues and vice versa. That movement fuels confusion in the retail industry in how sales get reported. An omnichannel retailer like Target can easily categorize sales made online and delivered directly to customers separately from an in-store purchase. But experts aren’t as clear on the reporting of purchases made online but that are picked up in-store or when a customer goes to a brick-and-mortar showroom for a digitally native brand like Indochino or Bonobos for a fitting and makes a purchase but the delivery comes from the same last-mile warehouse used for e-commerce sales. “It’s so cloudy and convoluted that I wish we could get away from all this,” Maloney said. “In the end, it’s all retail sales.”
April 9, 2019 Cameron Sperance, Bisnow Boston
The man from Cleveland strolled into a Manhattan shop hunting for two items: an overcoat and an overview. The first would shield him from the chill. The second would provide him even more intel on the state of American retail.
Jack Kleinhenz bagged both.
“I love the social interaction of the stores,” says Kleinhenz, chief economist for the National Retail Federation and principal of Kleinhenz & Associates, a financial consulting and wealth management firm based in Ohio. “It’s entertaining for me. Of course, that’s probably because of my job.
“I like to go in and just observe. On that visit, I tried on a coat and talked to some sales associates. I asked them how things are going, what’s new and how they’re doing.”
What he heard: They’re doing better.
Kleinhenz was in New York to attend NRF 2019: Retail’s Big Show. The industry’s annual, flagship event drew nearly 40,000 people to the Javits Center in January to see, sample and sell the latest retail goods and gadgetry.
In New York, Transform sat down with Kleinhenz to hear his views on the moods of both the sellers and the shoppers.
TRANSFORM: Heading into 2019, how hungry are consumers to spend their money in the stores and online?
JACK KLEINHENZ: The consumer is in a good place.
Financially, many households are in good shape. The ratio of monthly financial obligations to disposable income is still low, equal to what we saw 30 to 40 years ago, (according to the Federal Reserve Board). I think many people generally feel more secure – as far as their jobs and their balance sheets.
More broadly, we have some tailwinds going into 2019. We’re at near full employment. Wages have been increasing. Lower gas prices put more money into people’s hands to spend. And we’ve had some tax benefits, although it will be interesting to see what happens with tax refunds.
TRANSFORM: New tech is front and center at NRF 2019: Retail’s Big Show. Which of these technologies have the greatest ability to elevate the retail companies that embrace them?
KLEINHENZ: It’s a great question but it’s hard to measure right now. I am seeing some interesting applications, specifically of AI and robotics.
Among the retail startups here that are using these new technologies, I’d say 15 to 20 percent of these firms could potentially be very, very successful over time.
Just look at what they’re doing. They’re making it easier and more cost effective for the retailer – and they’re making it attractive for the consumer.
TRANSFORM: What does it say to you that so many companies are investing in digital reinvention?
KLEINHENZ: That we’re not standing still.
You know, I love this line from (former racing star) Mario Andretti: ‘If everything seems under control, you‘re not going fast enough.’And if (standing still) is the case, I think those companies have to move and they have to move fast. They can’t stand on their laurels. They can’t continue to operate as they have been.
TRANSFORM: What predictions about the digital revolution in retail have not come true?
KLEINHENZ: A few years ago, people would say: ‘Well, e-commerce is going to take over.’
What have we seen? We’ve seen a lot of convergence between e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar stores. They’re learning how they can be more effective in attracting consumers by having a store presence.
Retail firms are thinking: ‘No matter where I get sales, no matter what channel I get sales, that’s where I’ve got to go. So I have to do multiple channels.’ You’re not going to lose the consumer’s interest in actually going to a store, picking up an item, seeing and using that item in person.”
TRANSFORM: When you shop, what technologies do you use?
KLEINHENZ: I’m a multi-channel user. I go online and look at specific stores.
For successful e-commerce companies, if they can get you to their website, you become more loyal to them. That’s how they’re going to be successful rather than just having a consumer type a certain product into their browser and then seeing what that browser tells them.
For retailers, it’s all about creating that loyalty and that relationship. For me, I am a loyal customer of a number of retailers. I will shop online. But I also go to the stores. In fact, last weekend, I spent all day Saturday shopping with my wife, looking for an overcoat. And I found a good fit at a good price – a good day.”
Was it a gangbusters Christmas shopping season as forecasts and anecdotal evidence suggested? Were consumers making big discretionary purchases in addition to essential spending as they entered 2019, even as some surveys showed confidence was waning? The answers will have to wait, as December retail sales won’t be released as scheduled Wednesday, Jan. 16, while the Commerce Department remains closed. Failure to reopen soon also would delay personal income and spending data, due Jan. 31.
Together, those reports constitute the most widely watched measures of household consumption, which accounts for about 70% of the economy. The disruptions come at a challenging time: Plunging regional gauges of U.S. manufacturing and business surveys indicate a slowdown in growth, and some big-name retailers have issued warnings about mixed holiday results.
For now, investors and analysts will have to rely on a patchwork of data. The Johnson Redbook report showed December sales rose from a year earlier, though it tracks a limited sample of results. The Retail Economist‐Goldman Sachs weekly chain-store sales figures are another source. Other groups provide clues on individual sectors, such as the National Restaurant Association’s monthly index.
The delay in government-issued economic releases “introduces a greater degree of uncertainty, which typically isn’t good,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Weeden Capital Management LLC. “It does create some real risk of misinterpretation” as people compensate with other, sometimes partial, sources of information, like a retail CEO’s comments.
The nuances in signals from consumers were evident in executive comments from Kroger Co., America’s biggest supermarket chain.
“They feel incredibly good about the economy but very nervous about where things are headed,” Chief Executive Officer Rodney McMullen said Sunday in an onstage interview at the National Retail Federation’s annual trade show in New York.
Credit-card results from companies including Visa and MasterCard would help fill some of the void. The Fed’s Beige Book release on Wednesday may also provide anecdotal details on spending and other parts of the economy. That’s why some investors are taking the data disruptions in stride.
“In a world of big data, there are so many other ways to get a view of the consumer than the monthly numbers from the Commerce Department,” said David Sowerby, portfolio manager at the investment firm Ancora, which manages $6.9 billion.
E-commerce sales during the holiday season jumped 16.5% from a year earlier, according to Adobe Analytics, which measured online transactions from 80 top U.S. retailers.
Still, companies depend on broader economic data to make investment decisions, and without it they’re “to a degree, flying without any instruments,” said NRF chief economist Jack Kleinhenz.
The Commerce Department’s monthly data are crucial to get a bigger picture because about 90% of retail sales come from small businesses, he said. Recently, several large publicly traded retailers such as Macy’s Inc. and Kohl’s Corp. provided discouraging updates.
“It was disappointing news, but I don’t know how pervasive that performance was,” Kleinhenz said.
Consumer sentiment has remained strong all year despite political head winds and market jitters.
Washington Post
By Heather Long
December 4
Alarm bells sounded on Wall Street this week as something happened that hasn’t occurred in a decade: The U.S. yield curve inverted. This is one of the most reliable predictors of a recession, and it spooked investors enough to send the Dow down almost 800 points (along with the realization that President Trump’s trade “deal” with China is flimsy, at best).
But this doesn’t mean a recession is happening tomorrow or even in 2019.
Roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy is powered by consumer spending. As long as consumers are happy and opening their wallets, the economy will keep growing, and right now, consumers are in very good shape.
Here’s what happened Monday: The yield (amount of interest) on the two- and three-year U.S. Treasury bonds moved above the yield on the five-year Treasury bond. Inversion is when a short-duration bond yield is suddenly worth more than a long one.
“A flattening yield curve traditionally has been seen as a sign that investors expect future growth to weaken,” Vincent Heaney, Jon Gordon and Chris Swann of UBS wrote in a client note. “An inverted yield curve is seen by some as an early warning sign of an impending recession.”
[Trump has won little from China so far. There isn’t an ‘incredible’ deal yet.]
As UBS noted, this is an early warning sign, and it could take years for the recession to materialize. Consider that the three-year bond yield moved above the five-year in August 2005, yet the Great Recession didn’t begin until December 2007.
According to many Wall Street analysts, this week’s inverted yield curve isn’t a reason to panic but is another sign that the U.S. economy is probably peaking. Growth is widely expected to slow somewhat next year and even more so in 2020.
How much and how quickly the economy tapers is going to depend on U.S. consumers.
“This is the most confident American consumers have been in 18 years,” said Lynn Franco, director of the team that produces the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index. “Just on holiday gifts, consumers plan to spend around $627 this year versus $560 last year, one of the strongest jumps we’ve seen.”
U.S. household incomes are rising as more people find jobs, and wage growth is at the highest nominal level in nearly a decade. More than 2.7 million more Americans are employed now vs. a year ago, the biggest gain since 2014. In many communities, people see visible signs of the economy’s strength when they view so many “We’re hiring!” signs around town. Franco says good job prospects are a key driver of consumer sentiment.
Consumer sentiment has remained strong all year despite political head winds and market jitters. People appear to be focusing on their own improving financial situations and not the headlines.
“Consumers have been pretty accurate forecasters of a recession,” Franco said. “There is usually a sharp decline in expectations for the future, followed by a decline in how consumers view the present situation.” But she said she’s not seeing that now.
On top of job and wage gains, many Americans have more money in their pockets from tax cuts. The typical middle-class household, earning $49,000 to $86,000 a year, received a $900 tax cut this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Earlier this year, there were concerns that higher gas prices were eating up a substantial chunk of the tax savings as families had to shell out more money at the pump, but gas prices have fallen sharply in recent weeks and are now at a lower level than they were a year ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It’s another factor helping consumers feel better off and making them likely to spend more.
“The recent drop in retail gasoline prices is poised to lift disposable income in the coming months,” said Neil Dutta, head of Renaissance Macro Research. “Disposable income is the main driver of consumption.”
[1 million Americans live in RVs. Meet the ‘modern nomads.’]
The brighter mood and fatter pockets of U.S. consumers are helping boost retail sales, according to Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. He expects retail sales to grow at least 4.5 percent this year, which would be the largest gain since 2014. His figures don’t include spending on gas or restaurants, so they are a good barometer of how much Americans are spending online or in brick-and-mortar stores.
If there’s a head wind for consumers, it’s debt. Household debt — mortgages, student loans, auto loans, home-equity lines of credit and credit cards — has now topped $13.51 trillion, which is above the previous peak from 2008, just before the worst of the financial crisis hit. Student loans often get the most focus since nearly 1 in 5 adults have some sort of student debt. Experts say it’s a clear hindrance, but they are encouraged that credit card and mortgage debt remain in check this cycle.
“People are using credit in a prudent way. They aren’t loading up on their credit cards,” Kleinhenz said. He pointed out that household debt as a percent of household income is low by historical standards.
An early warning sign could be car loans. Auto loans that are 90 days delinquent just hit the highest level since early 2012, according to New York Federal Reserve data. Auto loan delinquencies have steadily risen in the past six years, even as the economy has improved. It is a likely indication that lower-income Americans are still struggling, even though many states and the nation’s two largest employers — Walmart and Amazon.com — have lifted their minimum wages.
But Dutta of Renaissance Macro Research pointed out that disposable income has been rising 3.1 percent in the past five years while consumption has risen 3 percent, meaning a lot of people are living within their means. Dutta said that is a “dramatic departure” from the late 1990s and early 2000s, when consumption outpaced income by a sizable amount.
This week’s inverted yield curve is a reminder that the economic head winds at home and abroad are picking up. But experts say to watch the consumer for the best gauge on the U.S. economy’s health. So far, most signs point to ongoing strength.