
U.S. February retail sales point to weak Q1 household spending

Economic News from RSM
The July retail sales numbers released by the Commerce Department on Thursday continued to reinforce that the resilient consumer has kept the economy afloat amid trade tensions and an unstable economic environment outside of the United States. The…
Today’s data comes close to wrapping up data collection for the second quarter of 2019, and imply that the consumer sector has robustly rebounded from a weak first three months of the year, while overall industrial production remains…
With the critical holiday shopping season fast approaching, American consumers continued to open their wallets in October, though at a decelerating pace. The October increase of 0.3% in top-line domestic retail sales and the control estimate that feeds…
Joe Brusuelas, “chief economist to the middle market,” is the preeminent voice championing issues and policies facing midsize companies in the United States and around the world. An award-winning economist, Brusuelas has more than 20 years’ experience analyzing U.S. monetary policy, labor markets, fiscal policy, international finance, economic indicators and the condition of the U.S. consumer.
A member of the Wall Street Journal’s forecasting panel and the UCLA Anderson School of Management's Board of Directors, Brusuelas regularly briefs members of Congress and other senior officials regarding the impacts of federal policy on the middle market and the factors by which middle market executives make business decisions. He also frequently offers his insights on the U.S., Canadian and global economies in the financial media. In 2020, he was named one of the 100 most influential economists by Richtopia.
Before joining RSM in 2014, Brusuelas spent four years as a senior economist at Bloomberg L.P. and the Bloomberg Briefs newsletter group, where he co-founded the award-winning Bloomberg Economic Brief. Earlier in his career, he was a director at Moody's Analytics covering the U.S. and global economies for the Dismal Scientist website. He also served as chief economist at Merk Investments L.L.C. and chief U.S. economist at IDEAglobal.