U.S. consumer spending hits record level

With early reports indicating that Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping set records this year, a new WalletHub report analyzing the latest official data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that the consumer spending wave has been building for months.

In fact, Americans spent a record $18.86 trillion in October 2023, according to WalletHub’s Consumer Spending Report. Here are some highlights from the research:

Record consumer spending: Consumers spent $18.86 trillion in October 2023, which is a record for a month and $48.5 billion more than September.
 

Spending-to-income ratio: The ratio of spending to personal income is 81.16% in October 2023, which is in line with pre-pandemic levels.

Propensity to consume: Marginal propensity to consume, which shows how much consumers will spend for each additional dollar earned, is at 0.7 for the month of October, which is slightly below the historical average.
 

Top spending categories: The category in which consumer spending increased the most during Q3 2023 was energy (increased by 4.1%), and the category in which spending decreased the most was motor vehicles/parts (decreased by 1.8%).
 

Pricey projection: WalletHub projects that consumers will spend a total of $38 trillion during the final two months of the year.

For the full Consumer Spending Report, click here.