U.S. Holiday Sales Are Booming, Just Not in Stores

Americans are opening their wallets at record levels this season, no matter how thin the in-person crowds look.

Macys Black Friday GETTY sub — Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Getty Images

Kim Bhasin,

Jordyn Holman,

Tiffany Kary, and

Gabrielle Coppola

December 1, 2020, 12:30 PM UTCUpdated onDecember 1, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

Don’t let the empty Black Friday parking lots fool you. This holiday shopping season still looks like it’ll be one for the record books.

Adobe Analytics, a tracker of digital sales, says every “Cyber Week” day from Thanksgiving on broke records for online spending. Customer Growth Partners’ President Craig Johnson, who’d been forecasting 5.8% growth this holiday season to a record $749 billion, now says spending in the final two months of the year may actually rise by nearly 7%. The shopping may have started weeks earlier than usual and billions of dollars more of it took place online, but the overall trend is certainly up.