If Americans are increasingly anxious about the economy and their budgets, they’re dealing with it in a surprising way—retail therapy.

Retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in November from October, as consumers ramped up their spending at restaurants, online stores, car dealerships, and other merchants, the Census Bureau said Thursday. The sales figures, which go by dollar value and aren’t adjusted for inflation, blew past the expectations of forecasters, who had projected a 0.1% decline according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal.

Consumers have spent ever larger amounts of money in recent months, powering the economy to grow at its fastest pace in years. The sustained shopping spree tells a very different picture about people’s finances than recent surveys, which show that budgets are under stress from steep cost-of-living increases over the past few years as well as high interest rates for consumer loans.

The Morning Consult’s consumer finance well-being tracker, which uses survey data from 2,200 U.S. adults to measure overall financial health, was barely above an all-time low in October, suggesting that people are unusually stressed about their finances. In a separate survey conducted by Bankrate last month, 59% of U.S. adults said they felt the economy was in a recession (contradicting economic data showing it’s not).

Americans may feel that the economy is in a recession according to surveys, but according to sales receipts, what they actually feel like is going out for a bite to eat. Sales at restaurants grew 1.6% in November, according to Thursday’s Census Bureau report and are up 11.3% over the past 12 months. Online sales grew 1% in November, for a 10.6% annual increase. Most categories tracked by the bureau increased in November except gas stations (where prices fell); department stores, and miscellaneous retailers.

The report left economists wondering how much longer consumers can keep cash registers ringing, given the financial stress that many households are under.

“The report underscores the resilience of the consumer, but given that spending has been driven mainly by draining savings lately, we expect the momentum to fade over the winter months,” Katherine Judge, an economist at CIBC, wrote in a commentary.

To be sure, household budgets are getting a boost from the still-hot job market, where, despite a recent pullback in job openings, joblessness is near record lows and employers are still giving out above-inflation raises. And price increases for consumer goods and services have slowed dramatically since the roaring inflation seen in mid-2022. However, people are still dealing with prices 19% higher than before the pandemic, according to the Consumer Price Index. 

And more people are falling behind on their credit cards and car loans, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. There are even anecdotal reports from around the country of people increasingly turning to food pantries to survive, many of them for the first time, according to the Federal Reserve’s “Beige Book” report last month.

Still, the ongoing increases to spending bolstered the case of economists and analysts who believe the economy will avoid a long-predicted recession, such as Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Independent Advisor Alliance.

“The big jump in retail sales shows that the death of the consumer—as well as the economy— has been greatly exaggerated,” he wrote in a commentary. “The much-hyped recession of 2023 isn’t going to materialize.”