Reopening stores doesn't mean that our retail spending has returned to what it was

A key to getting the economy back on track is restoring consumer spending to the pace that it was at before COVID-19 broke out. June's retail sales report loomed as a big indicator of that, since that was the month where many restrictions closing businesses had been relaxed...and right before COVID resurged to the record levels that we are seeing today.

If you dig into the retail sales report, the topline sounds pretty good, although the April through June shows the damage that was done.

Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for June 2020, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $524.3 billion,an increase of 7.5 percent (±0.5 percent) from the previous month, and 1.1 percent (±0.7 percent) above June 2019. Total sales for the April 2020 through June 2020 period were down 8.1 percent (±0.5 percent) from the same period a year ago. The April 2020 to May 2020 percent change was revised from up 17.7 percent(±0.5 percent) to up 18.2percent(±0.3 percent).

And if you just looked at the totals, you might think we had mostly recovered from the COVID-related shutdowns, as total retail spending was back near where we were at the start of 2020, especially if you look at "core" retail sales.

And June's sales reflected the switching in where Americans chose to spend money at, as more options were made available to them, as well as more travel to/from work and other places.

Retail sectors up in June
Clothing and accessory stores +105.1%
Electronics/appliance stores +37.4%
Furniture/home stores +32.5%
Sporting goods, hobby, music, book stores +26.5%
Bars and restaurants +20.0%
Gasoline stations +15.3%

Retail sectors down in June
Non-store retailers -2.4%
Grocery stores -1.6%
All food/beverage stores -1.2%
Building material/garden stores -0.3%

But the numbers from June don't come close to taking us back to the pre-COVID world of retail. Several brick-and-mortar retailers were still down between 10 and 30% compared to where they were in June, while the Amazon-type retailers, Menard's-type stores and grocers continued to benefit from higher sales to people that still were still staying in more than they were at the start of 2020.

This is before COVID re-emerged as widespread as ever, and caused more cutbacks and shutdowns in these depressed sectors across several states. I have no reason to think those sectors grew in July (except for maybe gas stations, and only because the price of gas has gone up), and these charts indicate the two-tier economic reality that has gotten much worse in America since March.

If you make most of your money in offices and by trading paper, you have likely been able to continue in your job with few disruptions to your income. You may even be better off, given the Bubbly stock and home markets. But if you work a job that requires a physical location, particularly a low-wage restaurant or store clerk job, you are working in a much more stressful environment due to higher exposure to COVID...if you're even working at all.

And yet, it's the office jobs and corporations that have gotten the bigger bailouts to this point, with a major cliff of cutoffs looming for the groups of people that have gotten the short end of the stick. The retail situation and the worsening COVID outbreak that's happened since then underscores the need for these depressed businesses and their workers to get more assistance from Congress ASAP. Or else many more jobs are going to go away in these sectors, and a lot of retail space/tax base is going to get vacant in a hurry.