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Posts tagged with: "RSFSDP"

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Gauging the recovery in retail sales at bars and restaurants

The FRED Blog has discussed how, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, households cut back on eating out and increased food purchases to prepare meals at home. With data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we created a FRED graph with two lines to compare sales at restaurants and bars with sales at grocery stores.* Today, we use the same Census dataset to re-examine the topic from a different perspective.

The red line in our FRED graph today shows the value of retail sales at restaurants and bars as a fraction of retail sales at grocery stores. We added the black dashed line, with a constant value of 1, to make it easy to see when the two categories of retail sales are equal. And they were essentially equal from March 2019 through February 2020.

In March and April 2020, though, consumers sheltered in place to help reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus and a wide gap opened. Between then and October, retail sales at restaurants and bars slowly climbed back. But in November and December 2020, those sales decreased again. A second wave of virus infections and renewed social distancing, as described by Guillaume Vandenbroucke, could help explain this change in trajectory.

To learn more about the effects of 2020’s second wave of virus infections on overall economic growth, inflation, and unemployment, read the work of William Chen, Marco Del Negro, Shlok Goyal, and Alissa Johnson.

*Technically, we compared inflation-adjusted advanced retail sales from food services and drinking places with inflation-adjusted advanced retail sales from food and beverage stores.

How this graph was created: Search for and select “Advance Retail Sales: Food Services and Drinking Places.” From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Edit Line 1” tab to customize the data by searching for and selecting “Advance Retail Sales: Food and Beverage Stores.” Next, create a custom formula to combine the series by typing in “a/b” and clicking “Apply.” Next, use the “Add Line” tab to create a user-defined line. Create a line with start and end values of 1. To change the line colors, use the choices in the “Format” tab.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

View on FRED, series used in this post: RSDBS, RSFSDP

Eating out or staying in? FRED says bon appétit

The FRED Blog has used data from the Census Bureau’s advance retail sales release table to compare the choice of spending outlets over time and to plot the relationship between gasoline prices and sales at gasoline stations. Today we use the “advance retail sales” data available for March 2020 to show another dimension of the social distancing required to manage the spread of COVID-19.

In the FRED graph above, the data show fairly steady growth of retail sales at restaurants and bars (the black line) catching up to retail sales at food and beverage stores (the red line) in August 2018. Note that to be able to compare sales figures over time, those figures are adjusted for the cost of living. The very last observations look like vertical lines because social distancing has dramatically switched consumer demand for restaurants and bars—almost dollar for dollar—to food and beverage stores. Keep in mind that the reported sales at restaurants and bars include the food prepared there for take-out.

If you look closely, you’ll notice the decrease in retail sales at restaurants and bars during 2009, as the Great Recession peaked and economic activity started to recover. During that time, there was no uptick in retail sales at food and beverage stores, though. Finally, although this FRED Blog post describes advance retail sales, an earlier post has compared those with retail sales and found them to be identical.

How this graph was created: Search for “Advance Retail Sales: Food Services and Drinking Places.” From the “Edit Graph” panel, open the “Add Line” tab and search for “Advance Retail Sales: Food and Beverage Stores.” Next, to adjust the sales figures for the cost of living, customize each line by searching for “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average (CPIAUCSL)” and clicking on “Add.” Then, further customize the lines applying the formula (a/b)*100. Edit the graph colors and salt to taste.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

View on FRED, series used in this post: CPIAUCSL, RSDBS, RSFSDP

Shopping lines: The evolution of retail in the U.S.

When it comes to shopping, Americans have many options: the corner store, the supermarket, the specialty store, the “big box,” online, and more. Above, we committed a graphing sin by displaying 12 different series in a single graph to show how retail trade has evolved across various categories.

Signs can be seen over the past two and a half decades: First, while food and beverage stores (supermarkets, convenience stores) were major destinations in the past, they have been joined by general merchandise stores, typically large suburban big box stores. A very volatile bunch are the gasoline stations, which sell mostly one commodity with a very variable price. Finally, one category seems to be steadily overtaking the others: mail-order and online shops (the line in black).

How this graph was created: Search for the Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services release and select the series you want to display. The release offers more series than the 12 we chose, but 12 is the maximum that can be shown on one FRED graph. In fact, with so many series, you need to make the graph larger by dragging the red marker in the bottom right corner of the graph. We chose the seasonally adjusted series and made the nonstore retail series black.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann

View on FRED, series used in this post: RSBMGESD, RSCCAS, RSDBS, RSEAS, RSFHFS, RSFSDP, RSGASS, RSGMS, RSHPCS, RSMSR, RSNSR, RSSGHBMS


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