Nordstrom's third-quarter earnings report was mostly in line with expectations, but the stock fell on Tuesday after the department-store chain said sales fell close to 3%.

Nordstrom (ticker: JWN) posted adjusted earnings of 20 cents a share— above estimates for 15 cents. But the company's sales, while in line with consensus, dropped 2.9% from a year earlier to $3.50 billion, suggesting even wealthier consumers are starting to pull back in response to a slowing economy.

Sales from Nordstrom's banner stores were down 3.4%, compared with a 14.7% increase in the second quarter, while Nordstrom Rack sales decreased 1.9% vs a 6.3% increase. The company said that the timing of its Anniversary Sale negatively affected third-quarter sales by about 2 percentage points, given that one of the week of sales shifted from the third quarter to the second.

Still, Nordstrom's results look particularly disappointing when compared with Macy's (M) blowout quarter, in which the company handily beat estimates and raised its forecast for the full year. Indeed, the results lend credence to the suggestion that a white-collar recession is coming.

High-end consumers have proved to be resilient this year, continuing to shop even as middle- and lower-income consumers started to curb spending. But the macro picture has started to shift , as Barron's has noted before. Wealthy Americans are now warily eyeing the layoffs in tech and other white-collar professions, which could be crimping their desire to splurge on discretionary goods.

The concerns about the economy eclipsed the news that Nordstrom reaffirmed its guidance for fiscal 2022. The company continues to expect revenue to grow between 5% and 7%, with adjusted earnings per share ranging between $2.30 to $2.60. Nordstrom slashed its guidance last quarter, chiefly because of decelerating sales in the company's off-price Rack division.

Shares of Nordstrom fell 4.9% to $21.45 in after-hours trading.