With a long weekend of holiday cheer to look forward to, particularly an extra weekend of shopping before Christmas Day on Monday, December 25th, Realty Times readers should be delighted with some fun facts and figures that suggest that online shopping isn't just for homes, courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau.

To commerorate the celebrations of the season, the U.S. Census Bureau presents the following holiday-related facts and figures from its data collection.

It’s in the mail ...

The U.S. Postal Service is expected to deliver 20 billion letters, packages and cards between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. The busiest mailing day this year is expected to be Dec. 18, with more than twice as many cards and letters being processed as the average on any given day. About 12 million packages a day are sorted and delivered by the U.S. Postal Service through Christmas Eve, with the busiest delivery day anticipated to be December 20th.

The December Rush to the Stores -- Last Year

Retail sales by the nation’s department stores (including leased departments) in December 2005 were $31.7 billion. This represented a 47 percent jump from the previous month (when retail sales, many Christmas-related, registered $21.7 billion). No other month-to-month increase in department store sales last year was as large.

Other U.S. retailers with sizable jumps in sales between November and December 2005 were book stores (96 percent); clothing stores (49 percent); jewelry stores (174 percent); radio, TV and other electronics stores (54 percent); and sporting goods stores (67 percent).

The proportion of total 2005 sales for department stores (including leased departments) that took place in December was 14 percent. For jewelry stores, the percentage was 24 percent.

Inventories in our nation's department stores between the end of August and the end of November 2005 grew 23 percent. Thanks to the holiday crowds, inventories plummeted by 23 percent in December. Note: Leased departments are separately owned businesses operated as departments or concessions of other service establishments or of retail businesses, such as a separately owned shoeshine parlor in a barber shop, or a beauty shop in a department store. Also, retail sales estimates have not been adjusted to account for seasonal or pricing variations.

Department stores employed 1.8 million people in December 2005. Retail employment typically swells during the holiday season, last year rising by an estimated 46,600 from November and 186,400 from October.

Easily the highest total for any month last year, the value of Internet retail sales and mail-order houses was $19.4 billion. Total e-commerce for the fourth quarter, 2005 was $27.1 billion. This amount represented 2.7 percent of total retail sales over the period and exceeded e-commerce sales for all other quarters of the year. E-commerce sales were up 23 percent from the fourth quarter of 2004.

There were 15,626 and electronic shopping and mail-order houses in business in 2004. These businesses, which employed 261,646 workers, are a popular source of holiday gifts. Their sales: $147 billion, of which 35 percent were attributable to e-commerce. California led the nation in the number of these establishments and their employees, with 2,322 and 30,619, respectively.

Online shopping for 2006 is set to break records. Online retail sales from Nov. 1 through Friday, December 15, 2006 were up 25 percent over 2005, according to Internet market research firm ComScore Networks, with Wednesday likely the biggest online shopping day of the year -- $670 million in sales, which easily topped last year's No. 1 day by over $100 million. In fact, sales on 12 days this year have surpassed $600 million.

Says a U.S.A. Today report, last year's single biggest day for online shopping was Dec. 11, with $556 million spent online.

Through Dec. 3, ComScore says, the number of online buyers was up 17 percent over a year ago, and the average amount spent increased seven percent.

Published: December 22, 2006

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