Online Shopping Is Stepping Into AI-Overdrive
Charts and missives on the incredible ecomm boom
prime day bonanza
almighty consumer interlude: a-ok (and payrolls too)
e-comm says “not today, S-curve,” and ponders the AI productivity lift
ecomm once saved the deficit?
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Two big things that really haven’t changed in an awfully long time: the Almighty Consumer is (1) A-OK; and (2) a huge fan of online shopping.
Prime bonanza
Prime Day came and went and, as expected, it was a smashing success:
Adobe forecast the first $300B non-holiday quarter for online shopping, and calculated a $26.4B shopping bonanza for Prime Day(s) (June 23-26) alone. Hooray for buying cheap tchotchkes on the internet.
Payrolls look peachy
Whether it’s tax refunds, falling gas prices, and/or (most likely) rising employment and wages, the Almighty Consumer has some serious pep-in-its-step.
The JOLTS release was all over the place, so it’s hard to find too much signal there, but this, otoh, is always a good sign:
Withheld income and employment taxes grew at a very healthy clip back in May.
Yes, real incomes have been negative, and yes, the savings rate has dropped in-kind, but there’s no shortage of consumer confidence, at least when it comes to actual dollars and cents.
Prices and spending have run ahead of incomes, so it’s not entirely surprising to see the savings rate come down—and it’s been tracking lower ever since the growth of real incomes began to taper in ‘24. That said, deposit levels are still higher than the status-quo ante.
The point being is that all signs point to: the Almighty Consumer is just fine.
ICYMI
AI Shopping
But, back to the story at hand, the growth of ecomm is a thing to behold:
