US Retail Sales to Give USD Direction in Busy Week

The United States economy managed to overcome one of its latest setbacks as the nonfarm payrolls in April released today managed to erase the disappointment from last month. The U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in line with expectations. The unemployment rate remained at 5.4 percent, but there was a further downward revision on the horrendous March numbers to 85,000. The retail sales figures have not outperformed expectations and in some cases failed dramatically to meet them. American consumers have not spent their energy saving and have opted to save or repay debt, which has hurt the retail sector. Going forward as the price of oil rises there will be no savings to boost sales so the numbers released this month could be further extrapolated to set the U.S. retail picture in the second quarter of the year.

U.S. core retail sales are expected at 0.4% excluding auto. Including car sales the forecast is for 0.3%. Last month core retail came in at 0.4% (expected 0.7%) and retail sales was 0.9% (expected 1.1%). The lower forecasts are explained by the lack of consumer spending that is hurting the retail sector. Historically the retail sales data has a deep impact on the USD, specially when the indicator underperforms.

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.