It's no miracle on 34th Street, but shoppers this Christmas are expected to spend with a little more cheer compared with last year's dismal holiday season.

Halloween sales, however, are expected to be scarier, with the average consumer projected to spend 15.4 percent less on the holiday compared with 2008 — even though Oct. 31 falls on Saturday this year.

The findings, released in separate reports this week by the International Council of Shopping Centers and the National Retail Federation, show continued weakness in the retail industry. Shoppers have avoided malls, slashed spending and hunted for discounts.

That led to the worst holiday season in four decades in 2008, despite some of the most aggressive markdowns ever seen on merchandise, including electronics, apparel and luxury goods.

With consumers feeling slightly more optimistic lately, sales during the November-December period are expected to increase 1 percent at major U.S. chain stores open at least a year, the shopping center council said Monday.

That's much better than the 5.8 percent decline for the same period last year, but chief economist Michael Niemira warned that retailers were still hurting.

"One percent is not strong," he said. "It's just considerably stronger than we've been seeing."

Forty percent of retailers said they were planning to hire 5 percent to 25 percent fewer workers during the Christmas season compared with last year, and 48 percent said they would hire the same number of workers, according to a survey released last week by Hay Group.

Merchants could struggle with Halloween sales, according to a survey released today by the National Retail Federation, which showed that spending is expected to be down and fewer people plan to celebrate in 2009.

Consumers are expected to spend an average of $56.31 on Halloween, a 15.4 percent decline from $66.54 in 2008.

Of the nearly one-third of respondents who said the economy would affect their Halloween plans, 88 percent said they would spend less overall, 46.5 percent said they would buy less candy, 16.8 percent said they would make their own costumes and 5.3 percent said they wouldn't hand out candy.

The Halloween survey polled 8,526 consumers from Sept. 1 to Sept. 9 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percent.