What is it after you adjust for inflation?
What method was used to compute total sales on Friday?
There are millions of retailers in the country. Is our government so efficient that in less than 24 hours they accumulated all the data from a million sources and compiled it?
If you believe that, I have some land in Arizona I can sell very very cheap.
We spent several hours today at Alderwood Mall near I-5 in Washington state. It is a very large mall with lots of stores including Nordstrom’s and Macy’s. There were tons of items on sale at 50% off regular price. Checkout lines were very short in most stores we shopped, except Victoria’s Secret. May be last year was so bad this year looks good in comparison. A few years back, we could’nt even find parking space in malls on black Friday.
Speculation, actual numbers come from sales tax receipts.