“Shoppers are right in the middle of buying back-to-school products but the retail supply chain is already preparing for the holiday season,” NRF vice president for supply chain and customs policy Jonathan Gold said. “August is the peak month of the annual shipping season that builds up to the winter holidays, and a lot of the merchandise consumers will be buying this fall is already showing up at the docks.”

Ports covered by Global Port Tracker handled 1.58 million twenty-foot equivalent units in June, the latest month for which after-the-fact numbers are available. That was down 2.8 percent from May and 0.5 percent from June 2015. One TEU is one 20-foot-long cargo container or its equivalent.

July was estimated at 1.64 million TEU, up 1.5 percent from the same month last year. August is forecast at 1.68 million TEU, down 0.3 percent from last year; September at 1.61 million TEU, down 0.6 percent; October at 1.63 million TEU, up 4.9 percent; November at 1.52 million TEU, up 2.9 percent, and December at 1.47 million TEU, 2.5 percent.

Those numbers should bring 2016 to a total of 18.5 million TEU, up 1.7 percent from last year. Total volume for 2015 was 18.2 million TEU, up 5.4 percent from 2014. The first half of 2016 totaled 8.98 million TEU, up 1.4 percent from the same period in 2015.

Hackett Associates Founder Ben Hackett said much of the recent upturn in the U.S. economy is attributable to consumers, noting that the 5.1 percent increase in year-over-year retail sales in June as calculated by NRF was nearly twice the 2.6 percent increase in average hourly wages seen the same month.

Global Port Tracker, which is produced for NRF by the consulting firm Hackett Associates, covers the U.S. ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma on the West Coast; New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston, Savannah, Port Everglades and Miami on the East Coast; and Houston on the Gulf Coast.

Source: NRF