NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Shoppers mobbed stores on the weekend before Christmas but they may not have spent enough to save what's shaping up as a disappointing holiday season for retailers, industry analysts said Monday.

Though hard numbers for weekend sales aren't due out til Monday afternoon, there were clearly plenty of last-minute shoppers flocking to malls on what is typically the biggest retail-sales weekend of the year.

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"The stores [in Washington, D.C.] were just jam-packed," said Scott Krugman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation, a group of store chains. "That's exactly what you want to see -- not just shoppers, but people carrying bags."

The NRF said it was sticking by its forecast for sales to rise 5.7 percent at stores open at least a year, a key measure of retailers' results known as "same-store" sales.

With the holiday season so far having been something of a disappointment, due in part to bad weather on two critical shopping weekends, the NRF's optimism seemed at least partly justified by anecdotal reports of strong foot traffic at stores and malls.

"We had a very busy weekend -- our Friday traffic was up about 20 percent over last year, Saturday was about flat, and Sunday traffic was up about 10 percent," said Colleen Boysen, marketing director for Columbia Place Mall in Columbia, S.C. "We were hoping for a big weekend -- our merchants really needed it -- and we feel we got it."

Still in question, however, is exactly how much all those people were spending.

While Boysen said many stores at Columbia Place may have offered deeper discounts over the weekend to attract last-minute shoppers, retailers in other parts of the country were trying to hold the line on prices.

"It doesn't appear that there was more discounting this weekend," said Amy Bellisano, general manager at Woodbridge Center in northern New Jersey, who described weekend traffic as "fabulous."

"I don't think shoppers benefited by waiting for discounts," Bellisano added. "Retailers were wise with their inventories, and people that shopped early got the best selection of merchandise."

Certainly, higher-priced luxury goods retailers have had no complaints this year. Industry experts have called such high-end retailers as Saks (SKS: Research, Estimates), Neiman Marcus (NMG: Research, Estimates), Gucci (GUC: Research, Estimates) and Nordstrom (JWN: Research, Estimates) the season's biggest winners

But many stores lower on the food chain, including Wal-Mart (WMT: Research, Estimates) and Target (TGT: Research, Estimates), may have been hurt by a reluctance to cut prices this season, some analysts said. And sales this past weekend may not have entirely erased that.

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Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest retailer -- and one of its biggest discounters -- said Monday that December sales have been disappointing, and reiterated that same-store sales would rise at the lower end of its 3 to 5 percent forecast. Target, another discount retailer, said after the bell on Monday that same-store sales were running below expectations for the week ended Dec. 20 for the total corporation and at its namesake discount stores.

Following interviews with about 800 shoppers Sunday evening, consumer research firm America's Research Group cut its forecast for same-store holiday sales growth to 3.8 percent from 4.2 percent, ARG Chairman Britt Beemer said.

"I'm just amazed at how few people shopped," Beemer told CNN/Money. "The lack of big discounts hurt retailers."

Also conspiring against retailers has been the sluggish job market. Though the economy grew at a blistering 8.2 percent rate in the third quarter, job growth has been much slower to recover.

The number of workers on U.S. payrolls is still lower than it was in November 2001, when the latest recession ended, marking the longest such stretch since World War II, according to Labor Department data.

Many economists hope the job market is on the mend, but it hasn't healed enough to help all the unemployed. The number of people jobless for 27 weeks or longer is at its highest level since 1992, and the average period of unemployment is at its longest since 1983.

"Upscale stores have done very well because their customers have been fortunate to amass a bit of wealth, so they're not worried about their jobs," said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Consulting Group. "But people who live paycheck to paycheck have to be careful, and they look at the price tag before looking at the product."

Barnard said the weekend's mall and store traffic wasn't enough to change his forecast for same-store sales growth of 3.5 percent. "We found out, from talking to consumers and store operators all over the country, that low-dollar items went very fast," Barnard said. "Forget about high-end items."

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Some analysts said the increasing popularity of gift cards, which don't count as sales until the recipient uses the card, could delay some sales until as late as January. Wal-Mart has already warned that gift cards will hurt December sales.

And it remains to be seen whether the nation's heightened terror alert will keep last-minute shoppers away from stores.

But most analysts discounted the impact of the alert, saying it came too late in the holiday season to shave much from total sales. They also said consumers aren't as affected by alerts now as they were in the early days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Shoppers in this area are very savvy and safety-conscious," said Bellisano of Woodbridge Center in New Jersey. "We're concerned about the alert, but we don't think it will impact sales or traffic."

"People have gotten used to this new way of life," she said, adding, "We work in concert with each other to make the mall a safe place."