MasterCard Advisors: Total U.S. retail sales for January up 5.5%

New York City -- Total retail sales (excluding autos) grew by 5.5% year-over-year, on par with December’s growth rate, and slightly higher than November’s, according to MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse. SpendingPulse reports on national retail and services sales and is based on aggregate sales activity in the MasterCard payments network, coupled with survey-based estimates for all other payment forms



Strong sales also led to a rebound in shorter-term growth -- on a month-to-month seasonally adjusted basis, January sales were up by 1.8%, reversing the slowdown that month-to-month sales had posted in December, the report found. Excluding both auto sales and gasoline, on a seasonally unadjusted basis, year-over-year sales in January grew by 4.6%, slightly slower than November and December 2010, but nevertheless a healthy rate of growth by most standards.



“Overall, retail spending managed to maintain its momentum following an already-strong holiday season,” said Kamalesh Rao, director of economic research for MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. “Despite some very challenging weather conditions in many parts of the country, and unemployment numbers that have not yet improved significantly, during the last two months we saw the strongest growth rate for total U.S. retail sales ex-autos since April 2010. Further, the year-to-year growth for three-month totals stood at 4.9% in January, the highest growth rate since August 2007.”