U.S: Retail Sales Decline by 1.1% in July

Retail Sales in the US declined by 1.1% on a monthly basis in July to $617.7 billion. This reading followed June’s expansion of 0.67% (revised from 0.6%) and came in worse than the market expectation for a decrease of 0.2%.

Consumers make up nearly 70% of all activity in the United States, so retail sales are closely monitored as a measure of overall economic health.

Backed by a series of government stimulus checks, shoppers helped lift the economy out of the shortest recession in history, and only two months of initial coronavirus fears lasted in February 2020 through April, a month after financial and monetary authorities launched a series of unprecedented programs to get America out of the pandemic. .