New figures are out for retail sales in November, and the picture is grim. A SpendingPulse report found that sales declined even further than October’s dismal numbers, and that Black Friday bargains apparently didn’t do much to break the fall, the New York Times says.

From the Times:

Figures released on Tuesday in the SpendingPulse report, from MasterCard Advisors, showed that sales of electronics and appliances sank 25.2 percent in November, compared with the same month last year. Luxury goods were down 24.4 percent, and specialty retail, which includes clothing and department store sales, fell 20.2 percent.

Those figures were all several percentage points worse than the comparable numbers for October. The report, while not the last word on the performance of retailers last month, suggested that the lines of bargain-hunting consumers that turned out for Black Friday had not managed to salvage retail sales for November. Definitive word on the question will come Thursday, when retailers themselves release their sales figures for the month.

This is important because the early spin from Black Friday was that sales were a huge success. At The Big Picture, Barry Ritholz explained how misleading early numbers from Black Friday can be.

From Ritholtz:

A few things you can count on every year around this time:

  1. Sales data for Black Friday will be touted by biased interest groups. They are invariably have an upside bias;
  2. Headline writers will get it wrong
  3. Survey data will be taken as the equivalent of actual sales;
  4. Strong forecasts will be subsequently proven wrong;

Such is the current situation with the Black Friday sales data, with reports still trickling in from around the country.

I was glad to see Ritholtz’ analysis, especially considering the gloomy outlook I’d heard from economists. Our piece at TWI on Black Friday reflected this. When I first saw the early and encouraging reports on Black Friday, I wondered if here at TWI, the constant flow of bad economic news had made us too pessimistic.

It looks like both views might be true: Black Friday sales were strong, but not strong enough to give some life to November’s dismal sales. Ritholtz says the SpendingPulse measures are the most reliable.

Now that I’ve discussed all this, I can’t help pointing out that it’s impossible for me to mention Black Friday without thinking of the tragedy at the Long Island Wal-Mart, where shoppers trampled to death a temporary worker in their search for bargains. In some ways, whether sales were robust or not doesn’t mean that much.

Maybe the bigger issue is reevaluating the entire premise of the day.