Shoppers swarm stores each year, but does it mean anything for retailers rounding out the year? (Creative Commons)

Though retailers try each year with great success to capitalize on Americans' compulsive need to a) be first and b) find the best deals, the Post's Neil Irwin says the money-hungry holiday isn't the economic indicator businesses might like it to be.

The typical assumption is a strong turnout in sales on Black Friday will determine higher holiday retail activity overall, but a study by Paul Dales of Capital Economics showed a negative relationship instead.

SEE ALSO: Black Friday Begins On Thanksgiving Night

If anything, Irwin writes, big numbers out of Black Friday predict a slow holiday retail season. So why do consumers get a different story?

From The Post:

Retailers know that a typical family spends whatever it will spend on holiday gift-giving, and that whether that spending comes on Nov. 23 or Dec. 23 doesn’t make that much difference in the aggregate. But retailers aren’t a monolith; they are all chasing market share from the others. And the minute one retailer discovers that opening at midnight on Thanksgiving will attract a mob of people, cash in hand, others are reluctant to cede those sales to the guy down the block. Thus, an opening-time arms race that resulted in this year’s prevalence of stores opening at 8:00p.m. on Thanksgiving.

And we of the bloodthirsty media aren't free from blame either.

For the media, it is a ready-made story. It takes place at a time that there is little other news, and it is known in advance, so editors and TV news directors can plan in advance for coverage. And there’s no doubt that video of people stampeding through the doors of a Wal-Mart in hot pursuit of a new Wii makes for great television. That is even putting aside more cynical possibilities, such as that media depend on retail advertising and thus have a vested interest in creating a sense of hype and anticipation around an orgy of consumerism.

Some of that anticipatory hype flurried around planned opposition as well. Word earlier this week was that Wal-Mart workers would be staging a mass strike on the grossest holiday of the year to raise awareness of unfair working conditions.

WANT MORE: What I Am Thankful For This Year

But Fox Business reported a much lower turnout than expected, with most of the protesters coming from other unionized trades.

From Fox:

The protests, which were planned by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, appear to have been tamer than some had expected. The demonstrations that did occur included many non-Wal-Mart employees, such as union organizers and workers in other trades like teachers.

“Only 26 protests occurred at stores last night and many of them did not include any Walmart associates,” Bill Simon, CEO of Wal-Mart U.S., said in a statement.

Wal-Mart said it did not experience “the walk-offs that were promised by the UFCW” and less than 50 of its associates participated in the protest nationwide.

Overall, roughly the same number of workers missed their scheduled shift as last year, Simon said.

Wal-Mart reportedly processed 10 million register transactions, about 5,000 items every second, between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight on Thanksgiving. In total, the monolith estimates it served about 22 million customers Thursday, Fox reported.

Read more of Neon Tommy's Black Friday coverage here.

Reach Executive Producer Catherine Green here. Follow her here.