Clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing rose 6.4% ($193.0m) in November 2022, the largest spike compared to other retail industries, according to data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Overall, November’s retail trade rose by 1.4%, with the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales period spurring a spending blitz on discretionary items.
This followed a 0.4% rise in October 2022, the smallest rise of the year to date, revised up from a previously published small fall.
ABS head of retail statistics Ben Dorber said the rise in turnover was driven by Black Friday sales, which boosted spending on clothing, footwear, furniture, and electronic goods.
“While we typically see a rise in spending around Black Friday sales, the strong seasonally adjusted rise in November 2022 shows that the effect is increasing over time, as the event has become more common across retailers and sales periods become longer,” Dorber said.
“Given the increasing popularity of Black Friday sales, the smaller increase in October may reflect consumers waiting to take advantage of discounting in November, particularly in light of cost-of-living pressures."
Following clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing, department stores saw the second-strongest rise of 5.4% ($104.0m) in November 2022.
While turnover rose in industries where Black Friday and other online sales events are common, growth in food-related spending has slowed considerably. Food retailing and cafés, restaurants and takeaway food services both recorded a small rise of 0.1%.
“The monthly growth in turnover for cafés, restaurants and takeaway food services in November was the weakest in 2022 following strong growth earlier in the year as trading conditions returned to normal,” Dorber said.
The National Retail Association interim CEO Lindsay Carroll said the overall result is reflective of consumers satisfying their spending cravings through the sales event. She said the uptick in Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales shows the interest of consumers to bring their Christmas shopping forward to November.
“Last year, household budgets felt the pinch of inflation, interest rates and energy costs, and many consumers were hesitant to spend, but the sales events offered them the opportunity to splurge on gifts and experiences," Carroll said.
“However, with the RBA having increased interest rates by 300 basis points in 2022, household budgets will become more constrained to start this year, putting further downward pressure on spending.”
ABS data also showed that retail turnover was up in all states and territories across the country. The Northern Territory saw the largest increase of 2.1%, while Queensland saw the least increase of 1%.
“The last time we saw a general increase of this magnitude across states and territories was during the COVID-19 induced spending in May 2020,” Dorber commented.
Meanwhile, there has been a two-fold increase in monthly online sales for non-food items since pre-pandemic, from $1.3 billion in January 2020 to $2.9 billion in November 2022. The highest this has been was $3.19 billion in September 2021.
