Are we out of the trough?

According to Datamine and their monthly Retailwatch, retail spend is returning to levels close to what we had before the global financial crisis.

Datamine’s Retailwatch report typically looks at year on year spend figures, overall and across a range of different categories. March was the first time that we have seen any signs of the recovery, spoken of by economists, echoed in the numbers.

May 2010 sees the biggest increase year on year so far, with total retail spend across all the categories up 3.4% on May last year. But we all know that 2009 was an economic trough, caused by the shockwaves of financial crises, the world over.

The question on everyone’s lips then is whether the recovery we are seeing now comes even close to the picture of retail spend that we had before the crisis hit.

The Datamine team were able to explore their data further to answer this and found that total retail spend for May 2010 is down only 0.8% compared to May 2008.

As far as the various retail categories go, not all are faring quite as well yet as in 2008. Those with the most ground still to gain in terms of recovering spend are the Home & Building Supplies and Travel & Accommodation categories.

Conversely, Department Stores and Supermarkets/Food Retailers are blitzing their 2008 spend levels, but some of this can be accounted to price rises, particularly in the latter category.