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Holiday spending meets the 2023 calendar.

I'm David Bruncancho. Retail sales went up 3.7% in the year through November, suggesting

shopping is running strong this holiday season. But a Gallup survey finds middle class families,

earning between $40,000 and $100,000 typically spent 12% less this year. Economist Julia

Coronado is founder of macro policy perspectives. It's really hard to know exactly what people are spending in real time.

So we had the smallest gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

That may mean that people did spending before Thanksgiving,

and that will mess up your year-on-year comparisons.

So I think overall consumers seem to be on a decent track. It's not a

blowout holiday season, but it's not a crash either. Yeah, because if we look at the underlying

economy, I know it's just one measure, but gross domestic product, I mean, what are you thinking

for this year? Yeah, we're tracking, you know, around two and a half percent. That's a very solid

performance. And in particular, in the second half of the year, consumer spending has been on a

very decent track now that masks some growing inequalities with higher income consumers enjoying

wealth gains and maybe spending a little bit more and moderate income consumers being a bit

more budget conscious. They're still doing okay, but, you know, they're feeling much more budget

sensitive than, say, during the pandemic when they were flush with cash.

...