Like the rest of the world, Americans woke up the day after Thanksgiving to news of the troubling new Omicron variant. That did not stop them shopping with gusto, in-store and online, on Black Friday, by tradition retailers’ break-even moment for the year. Initial figures suggest consumers were out in shops in greater force than last year, if not yet in pre-pandemic numbers. Online sales, after last year’s big step-up, were flattish. Yet with strong sales throughout November being fuelled by a release of cashpiles amassed in the pandemic, a reckoning was always set to follow. Omicron has now raised new questions over the sustainability of spending.
和全世界其他地方的人們一樣，美國人在感恩節次日醒來，就聽到了令人不安的新冠病毒新變種Omicron的消息。這并沒有阻止他們在黑色星期五——零售商這一年能不能賺到錢一般就看這個時候了——大肆購物，無論是在線下還是線上。初步數據表明，消費者外出去商店里購物的人數雖然還沒有達到疫情前的水平，但也超過了去年。線上銷售在經歷了去年的大幅增長后今年表現平平。不過銷售額的回落是意料之中的，因為整個11月之所以銷售強勁，是人們在疫情期間積攢的現金釋放了出來。Omicron現在對消費狀況的可持續性提出了新的問題。