Americans probably brought the holiday spirit in abundance to retailers last month, marking a strong finish to 2017.
Receipts climbed another solid 0.5 percent in December after a 0.8 percent jump a month earlier that reflected broad-based gains, according to the median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists before Friday’s release from the Commerce Department. Compared with a year earlier, sales in November were up 5.8 percent, the most since March 2012.