Job market affets retail market for the holidays

With the current Job market at a standstill, retailers are becoming more and more concerned about sales as the holidays are quickly approaching. People just simply do not have to money to spend on holiday shopping. I was in the Halloween store just yesterday and was very surprised to see that there was not a swarm of people in their rushing to get their costumes for this upcoming Saturday. The amount of costumes that were not sold out, was much less than I have seen in previous years when the economy was at a good place. I overheard the gentleman that works there saying that he was even surprised that so many costumes were still left so close to Halloween. It seems that during this season, people are making costumes or recycling them from previous years.

We keep seeing the economy going up and down over the past few months, which doesn’t give consumers and retailers much hope that the economy is going to improve anytime soon. Having a steady economy depends mostly on people pumping money into retailers and even larger purchases. People don’t have the income, in turn causing them not to be able to spend. Is this vicious cycle ever going to end?

Consumers and retailers don’t have a bright outlook on the future, especially those retailers who thrive on the holidays to make the majority of their money for the year. Bigger retailers, which make large amounts of money throughout the year don’t seem to be as concerned with this issue. Seasonal places such a Christmas tress lots or stores that sell holiday decorations and seasonal stuff are more concerned, since that is where all or most of the income for the year comes from.

The spenders or consumers do not feel that spending is going to get better. Most of these people are out of work, with really no hope of anything promising happening in the near future, or working but not able to get a pay increase because employers cannot afford it. Some companies are even giving salary cuts.

Experts have said that seeing the Real Estate market pick up over the last few months, leaves hope on that front. Which boggles my mind a little bit; how are people not able to afford to spend money on Holiday shopping or to pump the retail economy, but they have these large amounts of money to buy big purchases on homes? A lot is due in part to the first time buyer tax credit, but if the government can give a perk to improve housing market, why can they not give a perk when spending money on the rest of the economy? As a consumer, it doesn’t seem that prices on normally shopping is low, in fact it is higher than I have ever seen it in my life.

If consumer spending is so important to stimulate the economy, then why hasn’t the Obama administration come up with something to help these people to afford to put money into it?

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