Traffic was up at brick-and-mortar retail over Thanksgiving Weekend this year, according to the annual National Retail Federation/Prosper Insight & Analytics survey released yesterday morning.

Retail foot traffic rose 13.7 percent year-over-year to 104.9 million visiting stores over the four-day period. Conversely, the number of online shoppers declined 12.1 percent y-o-y to 127.8 million from 145.4 million in 2020.

More holiday shoppers are starting to buy gifts even earlier than Thanksgiving over the last few years, enticed by early deals from retailers, the trade group pointed out. Most weekend shoppers (82 percent) said they felt the deals were the same or better this year compared to last Thanksgiving.

Clothing/accessories was the top category over the weekend, purchased by 51 percent of those surveyed. Gift cards/certificates were purchased by 28 percent of respondents. In total, 179.8 million unique shoppers made in-store and online purchases during the holiday weekend, exceeding NRF’s initial expectations by over 21 million.

According to a NRF forecast, holiday sales for the two-month period ending Dec. 31 will rise between 8.5 and 10.5 percent y-o-y to $834.4-$859 billion.