We can hear the mainstream media now – “Great News Everyone!! The American consumer is back” – online sales on Black Friday rose 10% to $1.7 billion which ComScore says shows “strong spending.” The only problem is – which we suspect will be oddly missing from the mainstream narrative, as ShopperTrak reports total sales on Black Friday crashed 10% to $10.4 billion. While blame has been placed on early opening on Thanksgiving, that is false too since spending on that day also plunged 10%. So, the sales news is unequivocally bad – which is hardly surprising given the collapse in consumer confidence.

So to clarify… ShopperTrak reports

Total sales in the US on Black Friday fell 10% to $10.4bn this year, down from $11.6bn in 2014, according to research firm ShopperTrak.  

The decline in sales on the traditional busiest shopping day of the year has been blamed on shops opening the day before. But this year, sales on Thanksgiving also dropped, and by the same percentage, to $1.8bn.

A big reason for the decline is increased online shopping, as Americans hunt down deals on their smartphones, tablets and computers.

So, fewer customers ventured out for the traditional busiest shopping day of the year, while online retailers saw sales jump… (via Comscore)

Black Friday (November 27) followed with an even stronger spending day with $1.66 billion in desktop online sales, up 10 percent from Black Friday 2014.

“While the holiday season opened a little softer than anticipated, Thanksgiving and Black Friday both posted strong online spending totals that surpassed $1 billion on desktop computers and grew at the rate we had expected,” said comScore chairman emeritus Gian Fulgoni. “This is also the second straight year that Thanksgiving has established itself as one of the more important online buying days, while Black Friday continues to gain in importance online with each passing year. Looking ahead to Cyber Monday, we expect to see upwards of $2.5 billion in desktop spending as people return to their work computers after Thanksgiving weekend and use some of their down time to continue their holiday gift buying, but without other family members looking over their shoulders.”