The Human herds were out in droves like something out of a cheap zombie flick as the Thanksgiving weekend kicked off the holiday shopping season. Although the lack of “door buster deaths” could be considered a negative indicator; retail chains reported strong customer traffic and increased per capita spending. According to the National Retail Federation, the average shopper spent $365.34, up 6.4% over last year. Weekend web and Cyber Monday web sales also set new records.

After several years of relative thrift shoppers may be parting with their money more willingly simply due to pent-up demand which retail analysts have been calling “frugality fatigue.” That said, consumers have been trained to only shop for bargains. We may see the Thanksgiving weekend spike fade as shoppers wait to see if retail prices come down before buying, leading to a second spike right before Christmas. Let’s just hope that everyone buys more Dance Star Mickey’s and Squinkies than they do iPads and Microsoft Kinect Systems.

The toy industry is expected to have a solid up year and that should translate into increased toy industry hiring for 2011. Most observers were surprised by the increase, from 9.6% to 9.8%, in November’s unemployment rate and several economists have called it a statistical aberration after the positive jobs trends of September and October. It seems that after seeing the strengthening employment environment many people previously too discouraged to even bother looking for work – “entered the job market” therefore driving the percentage of unemployed job seekers even higher. However, if you look at a wider variety of indicators, the overall trend continues to show steady, if unimpressive, improvement.

Hours worked and wages have been rising (although they were flat in November). Both measures tend to foreshadow future job growth. As we have seen, consumer spending is up. Third quarter results from Visa, Mastercard and American Express showed US consumers spending approximately 13 per cent more than last year. Consumer sentiment rose in November to its highest level since June. November Job postings on Monster were up 22%. Lastly, the government revised jobs data for September and October to show stronger numbers than previously reported. It would not be surprising to see November’s numbers revised upward as well.

Anecdotally, here to Toyjobs, we have seen search starts pick up sharply beginning in the second half of October. My impression is that coming out of the depths of 2009, few companies budgeted for much, if any, hiring during the current year. When they found themselves in need of people they would start to look, they would interview, but would then find some way to postpone actual hiring. Now that the economy has stabilized and is growing albeit very slowly – they are looking to shore up their rosters and have that in their budgets for 2011. That does not mean that I foresee a wave of wholesale hiring but rather that companies are now looking to fill the holes that in 2010 they left vacant. This is the employer version of pent-up demand.

The US economy is firing on more (but still not all) cylinders and the recovery is just beginning to pick up steam. That said, there’s still a chance that it could disrail as many employers remain cautious about hiring due to the uncertainty over taxes, new health care and environmental laws, etc. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid appear to be oblivious to the “shellacking” they took in the recent elections. Fortunately most of the Democrats and President Obama (despite what he says publicly) seem to get it. It looks like in the next week or so we will see a compromise bill passed which will forestall any and all tax increases for a period of two years. Unless Congress acts, tens of millions of people could see their withholding taxes go up in January. That could dampen household spending and further weaken employment and the fragile recovery.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am an independent who has voted Democrat more often than not. I generally (but not always) admire Democrat’s social goals but often find myself concerned about the unintended consequences of their proposed actions. With the economy at a tipping point this is no time to be raising any kind of taxes on anything and definitely no time for continued uncertainty. If you’re going to make those kinds of changes, do it during “good times” so that the system can better absorb them. Once we get the economy steadily growing again, tax revenues will rise and it will be easier to attack the deficit. If you can get rid of all the agendas, dogma and histrionics (fat chance!) it pretty much becomes common sense – Econ 101. I’m going to shut my mouth now, before I get into any more trouble.

Muddling through,

Tom Keoughan

 

P.S. Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself from taking one last stir at the pot. In the last couple of weeks, Isaac Larian of MGA Entertainment had publicly accused the Toy Industry Association of being prejudiced against him and his firm. While I can’t speak either for or about TIA or MGA; I’m not sure that prejudice is always such a bad thing. I oftentimes find myself biased against working with nasty, unethical people and/or the companies they control. Is that wrong? I don’t think so.