Andrea Walker reports that labor analysts expect stores to staff the floors with at least 50,000 more folks this holiday season than they did last year. Shoppers are expected to increase spending a little bit, too. But the big picture for American retailing is far from gangbusters. While holiday sales probably will grow, they won't get back to pre-recession levels.
As the graph from Calculated Risk shows below, before the recession Americans were buying stuff at a seasonally adjusted rate of about $380 billion per month. That was in late 2007. It's almost three years later and we still aren't back.