Consumers Spending Cautiously This Year

Faced with uncertain prospects in the new year, American consumers spent cautiously at the start of the holiday shopping season.

Retail sales rose a lackluster 0.2 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted $213.8 billion, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That followed declines of 0.2 percent in October and 0.3 percent in September. In advance, economists had predicted a more robust 0.5 percent gain.

Separately, the Labor Department said new applications for unemployment benefits fell by 13,000 to 311,000 last week - a level indicating jobs are plentiful.

But economist Daryl Delano of Cahners Economics in Newton, Mass., said a large credit-card debt and uncertainty about the eventual impact of Asian financial crises may be taking the edge off consumers’ euphoria.