April US Retail Sales Up 8.8%

MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse, a macroeconomic report tracking national retail and service sales, provided summary results for April 2011. Excluding auto sales, total retail sales grew 8.8 percent year-over-year, stronger than March’s growth rate and substantially higher than the average 7.1 percent year-to-year growth rate of the previous quarter. Spending on gasoline has helped drive overall sales figures to some extent, but retail sales excluding gasoline show few signs of abating.