Denmark spending monitor: First week of June shows very strong spending

Danish card and MobilePay data, improved significantly last week, and outside Christmas shopping season, the first week of June had the highest card and MobilePay spending for the period covered by the data. There is notoriously a lot of noise in the data during May and June, as holidays fall differently from year to year, but overall the figures look strong for the beginning of the month, and has clearly improved since the middle of May.
After a few weeks of weakness in retailing during May, also due to mandatory closures of physical stores for the spring holidays, we saw a significant lift in spending in early June. This signals that we are yet to see a sustained shift away from goods, despite the improvement in a number of services - notably travel spending.
Travel spending continues to improve. Spending on packaged holidays is now only down by a little more than 20% compared to normal - a remarkable improvement since early May, when we started to see a gradual easing of travel restrictions.
Spending on restaurants and bars improved in the beginning of June as well, with particularly traditional restaurants starting to perform better than normal. Significant improvements in the weather could be the reason.
Overall there are signs that spending has picked up compared to just a few weeks ago. Data is notoriously volatile this time of year, but there is reason to be optimistic of strong spending over the summer, which also gets a lift from restrictions being loosened.

Danske Research Team Danske Bank A/S

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Danske Research Team

Danske Bank A/S

Research is part of Danske Bank Markets and operate as Danske Bank's research department. The department monitors financial markets and economic trends of relevance to Danske Bank Markets and its clients.

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