Grand Forks released retail sales tax collections which are for the month of December 2017. There are various different ways to look at the number. It is a .31% increase over December of 2016. An increase is an increase I suppose, though it should be cause for concern if the general optimism permeating the economy surrounding the tax cut happened to miss Grand Forks. The January and February releases for this year, which represent sales tax collected in November and December of 2017, are around 6.5% less than this time last year. It is also the case that 17 of the last 38 months have been lower than year ago values for sales tax collections.

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There are many ways to slice and dice employment and the change in employment in a community. How webs to do it, and whether the approach generates meaningful outcomes, is not always clear. We can look at particular sectors and attribute outsize importance to them and fear job loss is symptomatic of a declining employment base. It could also be the case the local labor market composition changed and the losses in one sector were the gain in another.

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Sales tax data is a continuing theme for me these days and so I thought we could look at any seasonal patterns in the data. I am going to hold off on the formal statistical tests for right now and we will go with the graphical approach. If there is seasonality in the data the graph should show common movements in the lines for different years. For example, if June is always a slow month for retail sales the collections should drop for most June observations compared to the May observations. I generate this for 2001 to 2017.

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