Steidtmann pointed to what he sees as the beginnings of job growth -- the yardstick, he said, that "most people translate to mean how the economy is going: if they feel secure in their jobs."
Last month, the Labor Department reported 270,000 more jobs in October than in September. And consumer confidence seems to be rising: on Tuesday, the Con-ference Board, a business research organization, said its index of consumer confidence jumped 10 percent this month.
And in New York at least, there are always those year-end bonuses. The day before Thanks-giving, the New York Federal Reserve estimated that securities industry bonuses would be 20 percent higher than last year's.
Some merchants were already playing down the importance of Black Friday.
"It's not even one of my top 10 business days," said Gould of Bloomingdale's.
For those who rely on the generosity of the public, it wasn't a big day either.
On Friday morning, Kathy Partridge, a volunteer for the Toys for Tots charity in the Georgia Square Mall in Athens, Georgia, compared this year's haul of donated toys unfavorably to last year's.
"By 10am last year, we had 12 of these filled up," she said, pointing to a big cardboard box, where shoppers deposited new toys for needy children. This year, the box held only 15 toys at 10am.
The toys included two Care Bears, stuffed animals that were being given away at the local KB Toys store with purchases of US$100 or more. The bears smiled up from the depths of a box that wasn't even a third full.
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