Norwegian retail sales grow strongly in January, jobless rate falls in December

Norwegian retail sales growth came in unexpectedly solid in January. Nevertheless, the retail sales are volatile and the December fall was upwardly revised. On a seasonally adjusted basis, retail sales grew 1.6 percent, as compared with consensus expectations of a rise of 0.8 percent. In the month of December, retail sales had dropped 1.9 percent and risen 11.2 percent in November.

The annualized three-month-on-three-month growth rate came in at 0.5 percent in January, while the year-on-year rate came in at 1.2 percent. A solid rise in the sales of furnishing with large price cuts in January was the most important contribution to the overall growth in retail sales. Also, e0trade and some other categories contributed positively to the growth.

Goods consumption which also includes car sales, electricity and fuel and correlates more with goods consumption in the national accounts were up 0.3 percent sequentially in January. The annualized three-month-on-three-month growth for the goods consumption came in at -1.2 percent in January. The goods consumption index dropped comparatively to retails sales by a fall in auto sales.

Meanwhile, LFS jobless rate dropped to 3.7 percent in December from 3.8 percent in November. Bloomberg consensus expectations were for 3.8 percent. The figures are three-month averages. Compared to the previous non-overlapping three-month period, the jobless rate dropped 0.3 percentage points. In spite of the falling jobless rate, employment dropped 8k from the previous non-overlapping three month period.

“This decline came after a strong increase during 2018. Over-all, there is still a positive trend for the labour market”, said DNB Markets in a research report.