Consumer Spending Statistics (2026)

Consumer spending is the engine of the US economy. Measured as personal consumption expenditures (PCE), it was running at about $22.1 trillion a year as of May 2026, up from $19.9 trillion in full-year 2024 (see the chart and table below).

That figure covers everything households buy, from groceries and gasoline to rent, health care, and streaming subscriptions. Because it is so large, even small shifts in how much people spend move the whole economy, which is why economists and the Federal Reserve watch it closely.

Consumer spending is not just big, it is dominant. PCE makes up roughly 68% of US gross domestic product, close to its all-time high (the share touched about 69.4% in early 2025). In other words, more than two of every three dollars of economic output flows through household spending.

That concentration is why a confident, spending consumer usually means a growing economy, and why a pullback in spending is one of the clearest early warnings of a slowdown. No other single component of GDP, not business investment, government, or trade, comes close.

The trajectory is dramatic. Consumer spending dipped to about $14.2 trillion in 2020 as the pandemic shut down services, then surged past $16 trillion in 2021 and kept climbing through the high-inflation years to $19.9 trillion in 2024 (see the table below).

Some of that growth is real, more stuff bought, and some is simply higher prices: nominal PCE rises when inflation pushes up the dollar value of the same basket. That is why the real (inflation-adjusted) growth rate, covered further down, tells a more sober story than the headline dollar totals.

Americans spend far more on services than on goods. Services, think rent, health care, insurance, travel, and dining out, are about two-thirds of consumer spending (roughly 66%), with goods making up the remaining third. In the first quarter of 2026, services ran near $14.4 trillion at an annual rate against about $7.3 trillion of goods.

That split has widened over decades as the economy shifted toward services, and it matters for investors: a services-heavy consumer is less sensitive to the swings in manufacturing and imported goods that dominate the news, and more exposed to labor and housing costs.

The money is spread across dozens of categories, but a handful dominate. In May 2026, the biggest month-over-month spending increases came in financial services and insurance (+$28.4 billion), health care (+$22.3 billion), and housing and utilities (+$22.3 billion), followed by a jump in gasoline and other energy goods (see the chart and table below).

That mix is telling: the leaders are mostly non-discretionary services people cannot easily cut, which is why services spending tends to be stickier than goods. The one category to actually fall was spending by nonprofit institutions serving households (-$1.7 billion).

The latest monthly picture (May 2026) shows a consumer still spending but leaning on income rather than savings. Current-dollar PCE rose $156.1 billion, or 0.7%, split between $94.3 billion more on services and $61.8 billion more on goods (see the table below).

After adjusting for inflation, though, real PCE rose just 0.3%, because the PCE price index climbed 0.4% on the month. So roughly half of the headline spending gain was simply higher prices rather than more goods and services actually consumed.

Spending has to be funded, and in May 2026 it was funded by rising income. Personal income increased $181.6 billion (0.7%) and disposable personal income, which is income after taxes, rose $164.9 billion (0.7%), according to the BEA (BEA).

The May income jump was boosted by one-off farm proprietors' income from federal disaster-relief payments plus gains in wages and salaries. Real disposable income, adjusted for inflation, rose a more modest 0.3%, roughly matching real spending growth.

The flip side of spending is saving, and Americans are saving very little. The personal saving rate was just 3.0% of disposable income in May 2026 (about $704.2 billion saved), well below the pre-pandemic norm around 7-8% (see the chart below).

That is a sharp fall from the extraordinary 33.7% peak in April 2020, when lockdowns and stimulus checks left households with nowhere to spend. As those excess pandemic savings were drawn down and inflation bit, the saving rate collapsed, a sign that spending is now running close to income with little cushion.

Retail sales are the timeliest read on the goods side of spending. US retail and food-services sales reached $768.6 billion in June 2026, up 0.2% on the month and 6.7% from a year earlier, the fifth straight monthly increase (see the table below) (Census).

A 5.3% drop in gasoline-station receipts held the headline down; strip out gas and sales rose 0.7%. Note that retail sales capture mostly goods and restaurants, not the much larger services economy, so they are a partial but fast-moving gauge of the consumer.

Within retail, the biggest categories are motor vehicles and parts, nonstore (e-commerce) retailers, food and beverage stores, and general merchandise. Motor vehicle dealers are the single largest retail category, and nonstore retailers led June's gains with a 1.9% monthly jump.

One industry estimate puts full-year 2026 US retail sales near $7.80 trillion, up about 3.7% from 2025 (a secondary, aggregator figure, not an official Census total). The clear structural story is that e-commerce keeps taking share from every physical-store category.

Online shopping is now a large and fast-growing slice of retail. In the first quarter of 2026, e-commerce sales were $326.7 billion, or 16.9% of all retail sales (seasonally adjusted), up 9.8% from a year earlier while total retail rose 3.9% (Census).

That gap, online growing more than twice as fast as retail overall, is why the e-commerce share keeps ratcheting up quarter after quarter. A decade ago online was under 10% of retail; it is now approaching one dollar in six.

Adjusted for inflation, the growth story is steadier but slower than the dollar totals suggest. Real consumer spending grew solidly through 2023 and 2024 (real PCE rose at a 4.2% annual rate in Q4 2024), then cooled in early 2025, rising just 0.6% at an annual rate in Q1 before rebounding to 2.5% in Q2.

Because consumer spending is roughly two-thirds of GDP, its real growth largely sets the pace for the whole economy: real GDP grew 2.5% in 2024, down from 3.2% in 2023. When real spending stalls, GDP usually does too.

Spending varies widely by geography. Per-capita PCE ranged from about $92,037 in the District of Columbia and $69,101 in Massachusetts (the highest state) down to $42,131 in Mississippi in 2023, the latest state-level detail (see the table below).

Higher-income, higher-cost states spend more per person, driven largely by housing and services costs. Spending grew in all 50 states in 2024, led by Florida (+7.0%), with Mississippi's 4.3% gain the smallest, so the level gaps persist even as every state's spending rises.

Consumer spending is highly seasonal, and the November-December holidays are the peak. For 2025, the National Retail Federation projected holiday sales of $1.01 to $1.02 trillion, the first time the two-month total topped $1 trillion, and final data showed growth of about 4.1% (NRF).

A record 202.9 million consumers shopped over the five-day Thanksgiving-to-Cyber-Monday weekend. The holiday season can account for a meaningful chunk of annual sales for retailers, which is why a strong or weak December ripples through the sector's stocks.

Consumer spending is both a barometer and an investing theme. When it is strong, corporate revenues and the broad market tend to follow, since about 68% of the economy runs through the household. A low 3.0% saving rate, though, means consumers have little cushion, so a jump in unemployment or prices can force a quick pullback.

For a long-term investor, the practical takeaway is not to time these swings but to own the consumer economy broadly: a diversified stock portfolio captures the growth of PCE over decades. If you want targeted exposure, thematic baskets built around durable spending trends (services, e-commerce, health care) let you express a view while staying diversified, rather than betting on a single retailer's quarter.