The daily business briefing: September 17, 2021

Retail sales rise unexpectedly despite Delta variant surge, Sears plans to close its last store in its home state, and more

Retail
Retail
(Image credit: MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)

1. Retail sales rise unexpectedly despite Delta-variant spread

U.S. retail sales rose by 0.7 percent in August, bouncing back unexpectedly from a decline in July, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The gains came despite concerns that a coronavirus surge driven by the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant was dragging down the economy. Restaurant sales were flat after rising for most of 2020. Initial jobless claims, a key indicator of layoffs, rose by 20,000 last week but remained near pandemic-era lows. "Delta? What Delta?" Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisers, said in a note to clients. He later added in an interview that the Delta-variant surge wasn't ending the recovery. "Absolutely not," he said. "It's an external shock that's denting it temporarily."

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.