The Five Days of Black ‘Friday’: Election Behind Them, Consumers Expected to Spend, Spend, Spend

The annual holiday mega-retail event began Thanksgiving evening in many stores, and the corresponding deals, continuing through the weekend, are predicted to yield the biggest Black Friday sales in history.

In its annual holiday shopping forecast, the National Retail Federation expects holiday sales to increase 3.6 percent — higher than the seven-year average since the Great Recession. The growth is expected to create 690,000 new seasonal jobs as consumers relieved that a nasty presidential campaign is behind them open their wallets, the federation said.

Caity Jackson of Lima, Ohio, was one of many who got an early start by walking off her Thanksgiving turkey dinner at Lima Mall on Thursday.
Thousands of shoppers flocked to Macy’s Herald Square in New York City on Thursday to get a jump on Black Friday sales. Donald Traill / AP

“We had dinner at 1, then we were at Penney’s by 3, waited in line at Old Navy and have been in line at Victoria’s Secret waiting to get in,” Jackson told NBC station WLIO on Thursday night.

“A lot of people take this time to be together,” she said. “They may eat early and then come out and shop early and spend all night shopping — and we love it.”

A line of shoppers snaked around a Best Buy store in Williston, Vermont, before 5 p.m. Thursday. Some told NBC station WPTZ of Burlington that thay’d been there since 9 in the morning.

“I’m buying one laptop for my mom and then another for my friend, and they’re both paying me backm because they didn’t want to wait in line,” one of them, Niki Rodgers, said Thursday night.

But people aren’t necessarily going to the stores. Shoppers continue to take more and more of their business online.