The amazing resilient consumer continues to do their part by continuing to spend. It is not at a big clip and not growing, but they have yet to retreat and close their wallets.
This is totally counter intuitive as the slowing wages and an increase in taxes “should have” taken a much bigger bite out of their spending patterns. Of course we are only talking about a 0.1% gain for the April period.
However, this was better than the -0.2% expected. Even more impressive was that the spending (aside from gas stations) was evenly distributed.
It is not all rosy. The previous month’s numbers were revised and the fact is that the growth is still looking as though it is slowing overall.
