US consumers are struggling to pay their bills, but that doesn’t mean they are pulling back on spending.

Bank of America last week reported that net charge-offs, which are debts that a bank does not expect to be repaid, jumped to ~$1.5 billion in the first quarter, up from $807 million the year before, and they stemmed primarily from credit card losses, according to the bank in its latest earnings call.

While Bank of America is expecting charge-offs to level off in the coming quarters, the data point is indicative of a broader trend impacting consumers: Household debt is rising, and consumers are getting worried they won’t be able to keep up with payments.

But so far these concerns have not impacted spending patterns, at least in the aggregate.

Keep reading here.—AV

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Conventional wisdom says that prices generally don’t go down after inflation pushes them up. But a handful of retailers have bucked the trend, and Michaels is the latest retailer to announce broad price reductions.

Last week, the arts and crafts chain said it lowered the cost of more than 5,000 items, with discounts ranging from 15% on frequently bought items such as paint, markers, and pens to 35% for canvases and 40% for T-shirts.

John Gehre, chief merchandising officer at Michaels, told Retail Brew that customers will see “constant rollbacks…over the next six months to a year.” He also stressed that the cuts were not part of a limited promotional cycle, but rather a lasting strategic shift.

Keep reading here.—AV

At first, Jerome Bridges thought the sound coming from outside the store was firecrackers or a car backfiring.

It was a spring afternoon in 2022 and Bridges, the scan coordinator at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, soon noticed the sound was coming from inside the store, and that it was gunfire.

“So I ran to the conference room,” Bridges said during an April 17 Zoom event organized by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). “I grabbed my produce manager at the time, my night ops manager, a cashier, and about six customers, and I barricaded the conference room door. You could still hear him shooting inside the store.”

What Bridges heard would soon be international news, a racially motivated shooting of 13 people, including four workers, which left 10 dead, one of them an employee.

“That day was horrible for me,” said Bridges, who paused for a couple of minutes as he dabbed away tears. “I still haven’t had a good night’s sleep in over two years.”

Bridges was among five workers who participated in the event, and they spoke in support of New York State’s Retail Worker Safety Act.

Keep reading here.—AAN

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