Many months into the pandemic, stores are still experiencing slow traffic, and total transactions are down 7.7% from last year. Customers are spending more per transaction, however, with inside sales per transaction up 12.9% year over year.

Incremental costs to retailers to operate in the COVID-19 environment are showing up in wages and benefits (via bonus or extra pay) in the form of “other benefits” expense and are up 23.9% year over year. Expenses for items such as plexiglass and other PPE also are beginning to show up in the data—in 2020, the equipment not capitalized expense has grown to $564 per store per month, or a 37.1% increase from 2019.

A bright spot in the expense side are credit card fees, which have declined 9.7% to $7,301 per store per month. This is a function of reduced transactions and fuel prices though, since the national average fuel price is $2.20 per gallon, down from $2.58 in 2020. As expected, card use has increased to 54.1% of all transactions, up from 51.4% in 2019. As transaction counts and fuel prices normalize, total card fees will follow and surpass historic levels.

Source: CSX Time Period Difference January to June 2019 vs. 2020