November retail sales are up 0.3% month-over-month — topping Wall Street expectations — according to US Census Bureau data. Consumers are continuing to spend despite inflation, with restaurants and hobby stores seeing some of the biggest month-over-month increases in spending.

Yahoo Finance Reporter Josh Schafer joins the Live show to break down the data, discussing the resiliency of American consumers and their disregard for inflationary trends.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

- Well, the consumer just keeps on going strong. US retail sales in November posting a surprise jump, up 0.3% where a dip was expected. Here with the sectors that saw the biggest gains and losses is Yahoo Finance's Josh Schafer. Still spending, Josh.

JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah, Rachelle. I mean, at this point, we really shouldn't be surprised when retail sales beats Wall Street's expectations. That's been the story for really most of 2023, and certainly through the summer and through Q3. But I want to hit some of the sectors where we saw the biggest gains and the biggest losses in the month of November.

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So right now you're looking at the overall chart. You can see retail sales up 0.3% in the month of November, after that slight decline we saw in October. So we're not trending down. That was a big concern coming into this report. But always interesting to just take a look at what won and what didn't win, especially when we think about November, of course, holiday spending.

So some things that did win, you can see there, restaurants, food away from home at restaurants, rising 1.6%. Hobby stores, 1.3%. Hobby stores include sporting goods. E-commerce up 1%. Health stores and furniture also up about 1%.

But, of course, not everything can go up, right. We didn't have that big of a number. Gas stations were down 2.9%. Now, part of that is really because gas prices came down. So that's not necessarily people buying less gas.

Department stores down 2 and 1/2%. Miscellaneous stores down 2%, electronics down 1%, which is in that discretionary category. So that's always an interesting one to watch. Department stores down, though. Another one to highlight. A lot more people shopping online this year, it seems, from various different data points that we're looking at as far as holiday spending goes.

And Rachelle, just the last thing I'm thinking of just overall with this. Number one thing we really wanted to see-- you don't want to see too big of a number, right. That's when people start to get worried about inflation and we're growing too strong. But you did want to see a little bit of a rebound because we saw that negative print in October.