November Grows Extra Week

November retail sales reports are in and it appears that premium stores are doing well with a sharp rises in same store year over year sales; 13.4 percent at Macy’s, 10.2 percent at Kohl’s, 9 percent as Costco, and 8.7 percent at Nordstrom. Improved sales at these stores contradicts the reports that Christmas shoppers this year are only "bargain hunters." What is truly interesting is the justification for these improved sales given by the New York Times.

The sudden improvement can be traced, in part, to a quirk in the calendar, which gave retailers an extra week of post-Thanksgiving sales this November, compared with last, artificially boosting sales.

An extra week in November? If there were some change in the Gregorian calendar that created an extra week in November between Thanksgiving and December 1st, it would surely be a Pulitzer Prize winning revelation. The New York Times, however, is not alone in this version of events.  CNNMoney also reported this apparently amazing fact.

November sales results for many retailers were also helped by an extra week of post-Black Friday sales versus a year ago.

Unfortunately for the Pulitzer Prize hopefuls, November has the same number of days last year as this year. Actually what is happening, and being poorly explained in the media, is that retailers are apparently including an extra week in their reports. This "extra week" is built into sales projections, so it is significant to compare actual sales versus projections. The premium retailers listed above beat projections by the following amounts: 5.9 percent at Macy’s, 4.6 percent at Kohl’s, 2.3 percent as Costco, and 4.8 percent at Nordstrom.