This morning’s retail sales figures are not what Rishi Sunak will have hoped for as he pitches his case for re-election on economic recovery. They are yet more indication that Britain has fallen out of love with shopping. Sales volumes were 2.3 per cent down in April compared with the previous month, while the March figure was revised downwards from zero to minus 0.2 percent. Some of this might be connected with the timing of Easter: the holiday weekend straddled March and April, so people will have done their food shopping, Easter egg purchases, filled their car with petrol, and everything else, in March rather than April, but the bigger picture is that retail sales volumes have never recovered from the pandemic – and they continue to fall, down 2.7 percent over the past year. We are buying 5 per cent less in the shops – by volume – than we were prior to the pandemic.
Clothing and household goods stores took the brunt of the fall in April, but we also bought less road fuel. The Office of National Statistics blames the weather for the poor figures – as it often does, along with retail businesses trying to make excuses for poor performance to their shareholders. But should we really believe that? If you don’t fancy a walk or a barbecue, a trip to the shopping centre might well seem an attractive alternative. And if you don’t fancy that then you might well stay in and do some shopping online. Yet a small uptick in online sales volumes did little to arrest the overall decline in sales.
Fortunately, there are ways of spending money other than down the shops. If you fancy going out for a meal rather than buying dinner to eat at home, that might be a sign that you are feeling financially more confident, and increase overall economic activity – yet it will reduce retail spending. That makes one wonder whether we are taking too much notice of retail sales over other economic data. Overall, the ONS reported earlier this month, the economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the first three months of 2024. Nevertheless, the retail sales figures are the first economic figures to emerge during the election campaign, and they do not add to the Conservatives’ narrative of an economy on the up.
One small positive development: the figures reveal that sales in department stores were up, very modestly, by 0.4 per cent on the month. This is a sector which has suffered especially badly in recent years, with many stores closing – including entire chains such Debenhams. For the past year or so, however, it seems that department stores have bottomed out. We might not be going back to the 1930s, when department stores with roof gardens and palm courts were all the rage, but there will be relief among the likes of John Lewis. In as much as we are shopping at all, it seems some people are rediscovering the pleasures of shopping under one roof.
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