Another Zero

The month of August resulted in exactly zero jobs added to our nation's economy, as we've discussed before. Now we've got another zero on the ledger: In that same month, retail sales remained exactly flat.

Actually, the situation is worse than that might initially seem. At the same time the August figures came out, the Commerce Department revised the July sales figures downward. The initial figures had July retail sales climbing by 0.5 percent, but now it seems that they rose by just 0.3 percent. The August numbers, then, couldn't even improve on that lower threshold.

The big culprits were auto sales (down 0.3 percent for the month) and clothing sales (down 0.7 percent). Some people blamed Hurricane Irene for the loss in auto sales, which is plausible: while she didn't reach New Jersey until the 28th, the storm did completely wipe out the final weekend of the month as far as car-shopping goes.