Forget the "fiscal cliff", forget economic uncertainty, this is Christmas after all.
And that is just what last minute holiday shoppers are doing. Metro Detroit shopping malls were full most of the weekends and, this morning, those stores staying open 24 hours a day are seeing a steady business as the holiday buying season winds down with most stores closing by 6pm tonight.
They are buying despite the numbers. Consumer confidence fell in December to a five-month low. . The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index slid to 72.9, the weakest since July, from 82.7 in November.
The National Retail Federation has said holiday sales will rise 4.1 percent to about $586.1 billion this year.
METRO DETROIT RETAILERS
Karen McDonald, spokeswoman for Twelve Oaks Mall said in an email to the news service Bloomberg that Twelve Oak s was "seeing small sales increases overall as larger transactions were compensating for a drop in store visitors."
Most of us try to make the most of our holiday vacation time. But we get a lot less of it than many workers around the world.
In countries like Australia and Brazil workers enjoy more than a month off each year.
In the U.S. the norm is about two weeks off.
But a new study reported in Business News Daily says many don't even use all of their vacation time out of fear of losing their job or appearing lazy in the eyes of their co-workers and managers.
'It's interesting that many workers are not taking advantage of their available vacation days for the year, yet are hungry for more time off,' Joyce Russell of Adecco Staffing told Business News Daily. <http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3635-workers-don-t-use-vacation-but-want-more.html> <http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3635-workers-don-t-use-vacation-but-want-more.html>
Australians 30 days off
Brazilians 22 days off
France 25 days off
Finland 25 days off
Sweden 25 days off
U.S. 14 days off
Japan 10 days off
On average, most Americans get about 14-15 days off a year, but many people do not take full advantage of their already modest vacation time.
According to a recent study by the firm Adecco Staffing USA, as of the end of November, 75 per cent of workers have yet to use up all of their vacation days.
Vacation envy: Nearly 30 per cent of those who took part in a recent survey admitted that they get upset when co-workers take several long weekends, while 23 per cent said that they feel that others judge them when they take any days off
But just because workers are anxious to use their allotted time off doesn't mean that wouldn't like to have more of it. The study showed that 40 per cent of respondents said they want one or two additional weeks off, while about 25 per cent would like to have three weeks of time off on top of what they have now.
The research showed that some workers don't like to go on vacation because of the critical way their colleagues view the time off.
Nearly 30 per cent of those who took part in the survey admitted that they get upset when co-workers take several long weekends, while 23 per cent indicated that they feel that others judge them when they take any days off.