The new Nielsen Global Economic Scorecard, released yesterday, shows that consumer activity in the United States and China showed significant declines during the month of March—despite optimism for economic recovery.
Additional findings include:
- March marks the ninth straight month of declines in unit sales in the U.S.
- The Canadian market remains resilient and dollar and unit sales continue to increase.
- In Western Europe, March showed evidence of slowing transaction size.
Here are the results for the US:
It is pretty clear things are not in a free fall anymore. At the same time, talk of “recovery” is probably more that a little bit premature. As long as the consumer is saving more and spending less, recovery is still going to be elusive. Now, for an over-leveraged consumer, that is just the thing they should be doing. It just is not conducive to economic growth.
What will most likely happen is we fall to a level, somewhere below where we are now and then rather than rise, that level becomes the “new normal” for activity for a while consumers continue to reduce debt.
Note: This a several year long event, not a quarter or two. Two decades of a credit card mentality cannot be rectified overnight…it will take time.
The consumer is doing the right thing though…