Consumer Spending Statistics (2026)

Consumer spending is the engine of the US economy. Measured as personal consumption expenditures (PCE), it was running at about $22.3 trillion a year as of August 2026, up from $20.9 trillion in full-year 2025 and $19.8 trillion in 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 made up 67.5% of US gross domestic product in Q2 2026, near the top of its historical range (the BEA series peaked at about 68.8% in Q3 2009). 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 $19.8 trillion in 2024 and $20.9 trillion in 2025 (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. In 2025, for example, current-dollar PCE grew about 5% while real PCE grew 2.6%, which is why the real 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 69% of consumer spending, with goods making up the remaining 31%. In August 2026, services ran near $15.4 trillion at an annual rate against about $6.9 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, and the mix shifts month to month. In August 2026 the biggest increases came in other nondurable goods (+$24.7 billion), gasoline and other energy goods (+$20.9 billion), food services and accommodations (+$20.6 billion), and motor vehicles and parts (+$20.1 billion) (see the chart and table below).

That was an unusual month: goods drove 60% of the gain, partly because higher fuel prices lift the dollar value of gasoline purchases. Recreation services was the one category to fall (-$10.3 billion). In May 2026, by contrast, the leaders were mostly non-discretionary services such as financial services and insurance, health care, and housing and utilities.

As first reported, May 2026 showed current-dollar PCE up $156.1 billion (0.7%) and real PCE up 0.3%, with a saving rate of 3.0%. The latest monthly picture, August 2026, is stronger: PCE rose $190.8 billion (0.9%), split between $114.1 billion more on goods and $76.7 billion more on services (see the table below).

After adjusting for inflation, real PCE rose 0.6% in August, while the PCE price index climbed 0.3% on the month and 3.4% from a year earlier (3.0% excluding food and energy), per the BEA August 2026 release.

Spending has to be funded, and in August 2026 spending outran income. Personal income increased $66.6 billion (0.2%) and disposable personal income, which is income after taxes, rose $68.6 billion (0.3%), while PCE rose $190.8 billion, according to the BEA (BEA).

The income gain came mainly from compensation, led by private wages and salaries, and government social benefits such as Medicare and Social Security. Real disposable income, adjusted for inflation, was flat (0.0%) in August, so the month's real spending gain came out of saving.

The flip side of spending is saving. The personal saving rate was 4.1% of disposable income in August 2026 (about $990.2 billion saved), down from 4.6% in July and 5.4% for full-year 2025, and below the 2019 level of 7.3% (see the chart below).

BEA's September 2026 annual update raised the saving rate across recent years: May 2026, first reported at 3.0%, now stands at 4.4%. The series is still far below the extraordinary 31.8% peak in April 2020, when lockdowns and stimulus checks left households with nowhere to spend, a sign that spending is running close to income with a thin cushion.

Retail sales are the timeliest read on the goods side of spending. US retail and food-services sales were $745.0 billion in September 2026, up 0.8% on the month and 6.3% from a year earlier, after a revised 1.3% gain in August (see the table below) (Census).

Gasoline did much of the work: gas-station receipts rose 6.4% on the month and 28.1% from a year earlier, while sales excluding gasoline rose just 0.2% in September. 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 services and drinking places, and general merchandise. Motor vehicle dealers are the single largest retail category, with $1.25 trillion of sales in the first nine months of 2026, ahead of nonstore retailers at $1.05 trillion.

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: nonstore sales were up 8.0% in the first nine months of 2026, against 4.7% for retail and food services overall.

Online shopping is now a large and fast-growing slice of retail. In the second quarter of 2026, e-commerce sales were $340.2 billion, or 17.1% of all retail sales (seasonally adjusted), up 3.8% from Q1 and 12.2% from a year earlier while total retail rose 6.7% (Census).

That gap, online growing nearly twice as fast as retail overall, is why the e-commerce share keeps ratcheting up quarter after quarter: it was 16.9% in Q1 2026. A decade ago online was under 10% of retail; it is now above one dollar in six.

Adjusted for inflation, the growth story is steadier but slower than the dollar totals suggest. In BEA's revised data, real PCE rose at a 4.3% annual rate in Q4 2024, slowed to 0.6% in Q1 2025, and ran at 2.1%, 3.7% and 1.9% over the rest of 2025. In 2026 it rose at 0.7% in Q1 and 3.8% 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 2.3% in 2025 (real PCE 2.6%), down from 3.0% in 2024, and grew at a 2.2% annual rate in Q2 2026. When real spending stalls, GDP usually does too.

Spending varies widely by geography. Per-capita PCE in 2025 ranged from about $98,784 in the District of Columbia and $74,900 in Massachusetts (the highest state) down to $45,855 in Mississippi, against a national figure of $61,062, per BEA's state PCE release of September 30, 2026 (see the table below).

Higher-income, higher-cost states spend more per person, driven largely by housing and services costs. Total PCE grew 5.3% nationally in 2025 and rose in all 50 states and DC, led by Florida (+7.0%), with California's 4.2% the smallest; health care and housing and utilities were the leading contributors in most states.

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 4.1% saving rate, though, means consumers have a thin 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.