Down from February, both real and nominal:
Figure 1: Retail sales ex-auto, ex-gasoline stations, in mn$/mo (blue), in mn2025$/mo (red), both s.a. Deflation using supercore CPI. Light green shading denotes US-Iran war. Source: Census via FRED, BLS, and author’s calculations.
Real retail sales thus defined are now down 1% in log terms. Gas prices averaged $4.10 in April, about $4.50 so far in May. If Gelman et al. (AEJ Macro, 2023) is correct that the MPC out of changes of spending on gasoline is about 1, we should expect further decrease in retail sales ex-auto, gasoline in May.
There is the additional question of who will react the most to the higher gas prices? This is hard to determine given the lack of high frequency readings on distributional aspects. In a recent NY Fed (May 1) piece, the authors tracks the ex-auto (but not ex-gasoline) spending:
Source: NY Fed.
These results are consistent with the view that lower income consumers will be harder hit.
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