From The BBC:
US retail sales unexpectedly fell in July, following two months of rises, as job security fears appear to have once again knocked consumer spending.Sales declined 0.1% last month, following a revised 0.8% increase in June, the official figures from the Commerce Department showed. Excluding sales of car and auto parts, sales were down 0.6% in July. The figures disappointed analysts, who had been expecting on average a rise of 0.7% in overall sales last month. Weak consumersCar sales saw the biggest rise in July, adding 2.4% as they benefited from the government’s “cash for clunkers” scrappage scheme.
The weak retail sales figures came a week after other official data showed that the US economy lost an additional 247,000 jobs in July, although this was less than had been expected. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 9.4% from 9.5% in June. “The US consumer remains weak,” said Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets. “The jobs situation, while slowly improving, is s…
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