On the program today what you really got to know about economic data we'll

talk weddings in China and working from home and then we'll go out to eat. From

American public media this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles I'm Kyle Rizdal it is Tuesday today the 17th of October good

as always to have you along everybody. You know there are days when you can take

this or that bit of economic data and get a good sense of what's going on. This

or that many jobs added to the economy. GDP is growing or shrinking this or that

much today. Well today is not one of those days. The bit of economic data in

question is retail sales for the month of September which we learned this

morning from the good people at the Commerce Department was up 7-10% from

August up 3.8% from a year ago. A lot of that was auto sales also spending at

gas stations and online shopping. But the thing you have to know about retail

sales data it is not adjusted for inflation and in today's economy that's

pretty big weakness as Marketplace is just in home reports to get us going.

The report specifically looks at the dollar value of the stuff retailer's

sell and that can be pretty misleading. Gasoline is a good example where gas

station spending tends to go up with gas prices. Skana Armournaf is executive

director of Employee America. It doesn't necessarily mean that there is a

strong consumer just because that happens. To adjust for rising prices

Armournaf does his own calculations. He looks at how much retail sales rose in

a category then compares that number to how much prices rose in similar

categories in the consumer and producer price indexes and can be perfectly

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