Paul Martin's Business Update - September 24th, 2014

One month down, one month up.

June was a tough month for consumers in this province, or at least it seemed that way. We pulled back our spending sharply, something that was the mirror image of the rest of the nation which was increasing its trade in the mall.

Then along came July. The rest of the country pulled back and we made a strong comeback, increasing our purchases by roughly the same amount we held back in June. Maybe it was the wet weather in June that deterred us or something else but we seem to be on something of a teeter-totter on this subject….changing direction in a big way in a relatively short timeframe.

What is interesting about retail sales volumes in July is how our strong the change was. A one percent change is big stuff in this area and we were down 1.1 percent in June and up 1.1 percent in July. On average, I suppose, there was no change but, in fact, it was really about cars. Sales of vehicles accounts for both the big drop followed by the big gain …so maybe it was all about the weather.

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