Sales are up 20% or so month over month at Brenner’s Furniture and Mattress in Eugene, Oregon. Revenue and foot traffic are up from last year too.

If you’re wondering why consumers are buying big-ticket items like recliners and sofas in the middle of a slowing job market, general manager Lance Miles has the same question.

“Yeah, I have no clue, man,” he said. “It doesn't make any sense to me.”

But more people are indeed buying those recliners and sofas. Digging a little deeper into those relatively encouraging retail sales numbers we got from the Census Bureau on Friday, consumer spending was up pretty significantly for more expensive items. Sales at auto dealers were up 4.7% in July from the year before, and furniture sales were up 5.1%.

Miles said he does see one sign of uncertainty maybe ever so slightly slipping into customers’ mindsets: sofas in the $500 range are a little more popular than the $1,000 models these days.

“I think we see more people coming in, getting the less expensive stuff,” he said.

Furniture is one of those products where tariffs are starting to push prices up.

Wealthy consumers especially have tried to get ahead of tariffs by buying pricey stuff now as opposed to the end of the year, according to Max Kahn at the retail consulting firm Coresight Research.

“People are making the purchases now while they perceive that prices are staying kind of where they've been,” he said.

But Kahn doesn’t expect the spending spree to last. A lot of big-ticket items are durable goods — you typically don’t buy sofas multiple times a year.