Consumers bought more stuff in January than they did during the same month last year, but the small bump in retail sales was less than economists had predicted.
U.S. retail and food services sales for January totaled $381.6 billion, according to advance estimates released this morning by the Commerce Department. That’s a 7.8-percent increase over the January 2010 total and a 0.3-percent increase over December 2010.
Economists had predicted a December to January increase of 0.5 percent.
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