U.K. Retail Misery Endures As Sales Decline Most On Record

The woes afflicting U.K. retailers continued in April, with sales dropping and demand for staff easing. Same-store sales plunged 4.2 percent from a year earlier, the British Retail Consortium said Wednesday. A 3.1 percent decline in total sales, while distorted by the timing of Easter, was the sharpest since the survey began in 1995. Separate figures from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation showed that permanent staff appointments across the U.K. increased at the weakest pace for four months, with a “significant dip in the demand for retail staff amidst the high street crisis.” Read more at Bloomberg.