The final figures for the US Holiday 2018 retail sales are finally out. The USA’s National Retail Federation, the apex retail body announced retail sales for the Holiday Season grew by 2.9% year-on-year (y-o-y) to US$ 707.5 billion (excluding auto dealers, gas stations and restaurants). This figure, NRF said, was “lower-than-expected”. The organisation’s announcement came on the heels of the US’s Commerce Department releasing data for the period “that had been delayed by nearly a month because of the recent government shutdown”.

NRF had forecast last fall that holiday sales from November 1 through December 31, 2018 would grow between 4.3% and 4.8% to between US$ 717.45 billion and US$ 720.89 billion.

The current total announced includes US$ 146.8 billion in online and other non-store sales, which grew 11.5% over 2017. NRF had forecast that the online sector of retail would grow between 11% and 15% to between US$ 151.6 billion and US$ 157 billion.

“All signs during the holidays seemed to show that consumers remained confident about the economy,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said. “However, it appears that worries over the trade war and turmoil in the stock markets impacted consumer behaviour more than we expected. There’s also a question of whether the government shutdown and resulting delay in collecting data might have made the results less reliable. It’s very disappointing that clearly avoidable actions by the government influenced consumer confidence and unnecessarily depressed December retail sales.”

NRF explained that retail sales in November –  considered the first half of the holiday season – grew 5.1% unadjusted y-o-y; but December was up only 0.9% as compared to the previous season, and down 1.5% seasonally adjusted from November. “NRF does not count October as part of the holiday season, but much holiday shopping has shifted earlier, and October was up 5.7 percent year-over-year,” the organisation noted. “As of December, the three-month moving average was up 0.7 percent over the same period a year ago.”

“Today’s numbers are truly a surprise and in contradiction to the consumer spending trends we were seeing, especially after such strong October and November spending,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. “The combination of financial market volatility, the government shutdown and trade tensions created a trifecta of anxiety and uncertainty impacting spending and might also have misaligned the seasonal adjustment factors used in reporting data. This is an incomplete story and we will be in a better position to judge the reliability of the results when the government revises its 2018 data in the coming months.”

NRF’s numbers are based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which said recently that overall December sales (including auto dealers, gas stations and restaurants) were down 1.2% seasonally adjusted from November but up 2.3% unadjusted y-o-y.

The holiday numbers emerged even as NRF has put forward its  forecast  for a growth in retail sales of between 3.8% and 4.4% to more than US$ 3.8 trillion in 2019, recently.