Background
Through the pandemic, spending has surged. Amidst concern of a recession, spending has continued growing. However, it’s skyrocketed in a few categories. What are people buying as spending changes massively? This analysis looks at the categories that account for most of the increase in spending from second quarter of last year to second quarter of this year. The chart below is color coded. Blue bars are “essential” expenses and orange are discretionary.
Findings
- Overall: A big zero (what??): Comparing the second quarter of this year to the second quarter of last year, spending is up 8% — but inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index, is up even more, 9%. That means that we are spending more…but net, getting less.
- Huge jump in travel: Air transport and accommodations (hotels) are both up more than 2/3. For air fare this is half due to higher ticket costs, and half due to more travel as pent-up pandemic demand explodes.
- Gas is very expensive: Anyone who’s driven in the past year knows what’s happened here as gas prices surged. On average we’re spending 50% more on gas than last year.
- Utilities jumped: This is primarily the cost of electricity. Throw in a war in Ukraine, higher oil and natural gas prices, and the story isn’t that we’re using more energy. We’re just paying more for it.
- Other essentials got more expensive too: Grocery inflation was 12% as supply chain issues drove up price. Housing was up 6% as the market boomed. And health care…is more expensive every year.
Implications
Spending is only keeping up with inflation. As consumption flattens and recession looms, what can we expect from consumers?
Historically, in a recession consumers focus on essentials – more on groceries, less on eating out; continued spending on health care, reduced spending on luxuries and on home furnishings. Oddly, travel spending usually holds up.
Given that every recession has a different foundation (real estate, tech bubble, gas crisis, etc.), consumer behavior isn’t consistent. What we do know is that it’s important for consumers to be sensible about their spending and saving which so far isn’t happening. The politicians don’t want spending to go down, but the best call right now for many families will be to step back from excess and to focus on increasing their savings, which they haven’t done yet.
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The small print
The spending data is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The inflation data is the Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And it’s only fair to point out that by the traditional measure of recession, two quarters of declining Gross Domestic Product, that we’re already in a recession.
