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Merrick, NY—So far, America’s retailers seem pretty bullish on the holiday. According to the Prosper Spending Score, the overall outlook for 2014 holiday retail spending is up 8% over last year. The number of consumers planning to spend more this year stayed relatively stable (9.1%) as did those planning to keep budgets relatively even with last year (52.9%), but the number of those planning to scale back purchases dropped by 11%.

Alan Levenson, chief economist for T. Rowe Price, points to many signs the economy is getting better: the labor market is gaining momentum, which in turn drives income growth, which in turn drives consumer demand. He also believes GDP growth will pick up as the various headwinds holding it back disappear.

Upper-income households have been the key drivers of spending since the end of the recession and they continue to remain optimistic—but for the first time in years, middle-income ($36,000-$74,000) consumers join them in an optimistic outlook this year, according to Prosper and Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley analyst Jay Sole says discretionary purchases—as opposed to staple purchases—are likely to drive the most growth this year. Watch a brief video here.

According to a recent article on Entrepreneur.com, 67% of marketers polled plan to increase the amount of spending for social media this holiday season, and 92% of marketers are planning to spend the majority of their social media marketing budget on Facebook—despite the slowing organic reach of that network and despite that almost ¾ of them say Instagram (owned by Facebook) is the break-out network of the year. And new, relatively untested networks can fuhgeddaboutit: none of the companies polled want to risk holiday marketing dollars there.

62% of marketers polled say their reason for using social media is to drive sales and extend brand reach, compared with only 13% looking for a direct return of driving traffic to their company website.

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