Regarding your article Is Consumer Spending Signaling a Recession?,  I have suggested to my financial advisor that one set of obvious data to use to measure consumer spending is State sales tax collections.  These data are readily available and timely.  I have never heard of any financial institution using these data to measure consumer spending.

This article mirrors what I have been telling my financial planner all along.

Thanks,

Alonzo “Al” Byington

P.S.  Sales tax collections for the state of Texas were up 5.8% in January.

Editor’s Note: 

Craig Johnson, whose research is profiled in the article, responded “excellent thought, and I have not looked at it, but it could well be a good indicator (with the only caveat, beyond data collection, is that it omits a good part of e-commerce sales.”

We checked California and sales taxes were down 9.7% in January (versus January 2007).  New York’s sales tax receipts were up 3.3%.  We also discovered a commercial vendor specializing in tracking monthly sales tax receipts - The Liscio Report.

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