“It’s pretty decent growth, but the average shopper is moving online,” Rishi Chhabra, vice president for information and analytics at First Data, told the Associated Press.
According to the Commerce Department, purchases increased 0.2% in November and a revised 0.4% in October, Bloomberg reports.
Weighing on spending, American’s real disposable income, or the money remaining after taxes, dipped 0.1%, which reflects a declines in wages.
“Income has been restrained by still subdued wages ,” David Sloan, a senior economist at 4CAST-RGE, told Bloomberg. “We were expecting a weak result because payroll earnings and retail sales were both quite subdued.”
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