Consumers Opening their Wallets

Consumers are not letting supply chain interruptions get in the way of their willingness to visit local retail stores as they have been finding their spending mojo this fall.

StatsCan has just released the official numbers for October retail spending activity along with a preliminary estimate of what was happening in November. The idea of preliminary estimates is relatively new for StatsCan and is part of their initiative to keep up with the banks which have waded into this area by tracking activity on bank accounts and credit card volumes.

What the report shows is that Saskatchewan consumers dropped nearly 4-percent more in local retail establishments in October when compared to September. That brought the total year-over-year increase to almost 10-percent so this one month accounted for nearly half of the year’s gain.

Nationally, retail spending rose by less than two percent so our gain was tracking at twice the national pace. And the early estimate on national spending for November is showing another 1.2% increase.

And one interesting note in this report is that on-line or e-commerce actually fell in October….clearly consumers still like bricks and mortar.