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们一样，美国人在感恩节次日醒来，就听到了令人不安的新冠病毒新变种Omicron的消息。这并没有阻止他们在黑色星期五——零售商这一年能不能赚到钱一般就看这个时候了——大肆购物，无论是在线下还是线上。初步数据表明，消费者外出去商店里购物的人数虽然还没有达到疫情前的水平，但也超过了去年。线上销售在经历了去年的大幅增长后今年表现平平。不过销售额的回落是意料之中的，因为整个11月之所以销售强劲，是人们在疫情期间积攒的现金释放了出来。Omicron现在对消费状况的可持续性提出了新的问题。