by Quinn Waller | May 10, 2025 | Inflation, Personal Income, Retail
At Cobblestone Quality Shoe Repair in St. Louis, third-generation cobbler Randy Lipson is seeing more business than usual. With many shoes made overseas and thus hit by President Trump’s new tariffs, customers are turning to repairing the shoes they already own rather...
by shenal.tissera | Feb 19, 2025 | Featured, Retail
Retail sales had their worst start of the year since 2014, falling more than the modest decline expected by economists. Sales were down 0.9% from December, according to data from the Commerce Department, which includes sales online, in stores and at restaurants. But...
by Anastasia Tomkin | May 24, 2024 | Employment, Featured, Retail
It is no secret that Black Americans are underrepresented as business owners. They make up about 12.4% of the US population, but Black business owners are only 2.4% of all employer-owned firms. And while Census data shows that the number of Black-owned businesses in...
by Jiana Smith | May 20, 2024 | Featured, Inflation, Retail, Trade
Kinani Ahmed, owner of Sextant Coffee Roasters in San Francisco, opened his roastery in 2014 with a goal of sharing the finest coffees of Ethiopia with others. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, that goal has become more and more expensive. The civil war in Ethiopia,...
by Jiana Smith | Apr 15, 2024 | Featured, Inflation, Retail
The U.S. Census Bureau will release its monthly retail sales report on Monday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect a 0.4 percent gain in retail sales for March. Thus far, retail sales have trended softer this year than in 2023, with an unexpected 1.1 percent drop...
by Jiana Smith | Mar 23, 2024 | Retail
US retail sales rose less than expected in February, a possible sign of a softer economy, but not necessarily of consumer weakness. February retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6 percent according to a Census Bureau report on Thursday. This was lower than the...
