Amazon Is Having a Very Good Pandemic

Hello there, this is Spencer Soper in Seattle.It’s no secret that shoppers flocked to Amazon.com Inc. to stock up on face masks and toilet paper at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and then shifted to desks, laptops, video games and even swimming pools as things stretched out for the long haul. Business is good when most of your competitors are forced to close.

The trillion-dollar question now is how much spending that shifted from stores to websites will stay there once the pandemic subsides. There's also the question of whether a consumer spending pullback tied to rising joblessness and uncertainty about further government stimulus will blunt Amazon's rise. We spent the past week and a half looking at a lot of data about the abrupt shift in consumer spending patterns, and here are some of the interesting takeaways.