Markets
How U.S. Consumers are Spending Differently During COVID-19
In 2019, nearly 70% of U.S. GDP was driven by personal consumption.
However, in the first quarter of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has initiated a transformation of consumer spending trends as we know them.
Consumer Spending in Charts
By leveraging new data from analytics platform 1010Data, today’s infographic dives into the credit and debit card spending of five million U.S. consumers over the past few months.
Let’s see how their spending habits have evolved over that short timeframe:
The above data on consumer spending, which comes from 1010Data and powered by AI platform Exabel, is broken into 18 different categories:
- General Merchandise & Grocery: Big Box, Pharmacy, Wholesale Club, Grocery
- Retail: Apparel, Office Supplies, Pet Supplies
- Restaurant: Casual dining, Fast casual, Fast food, Fine dining
- Food Delivery: Food delivery, Grocery Delivery, Meal/Snack kit
- Travel: Airline, Car rental, Cruise, Hotel
Itโs no surprise that COVID-19 has consumers cutting back on most of their purchases, but that doesn’t mean that specific categories don’t benefit from changes in consumer habits.
Consumer Spending Changes By Category
The onset of changing consumer behavior can be observed from February 25, 2020, when compared year-over-year (YoY).
As of May 12, 2020, combined spending in all categories dropped by almost 30% YoY. Hereโs how that shakes out across the different categories, across two months.
General Merchandise & Grocery
This segment saw a sharp spike in initial spending, as Americans scrambled to stockpile on non-perishable food, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper from Big Box stores like Walmart, or Wholesale Clubs like Costco.
In particular, spending on groceries reached a YoY increase of 97.1% on March 18, 2020. However, these sudden panic-buying urges leveled out by the start of April.
Feb 25, 2020 YoY Spending | May 5, 2020 YoY Spending | Overall Change | |
---|---|---|---|
Big Box | +14.2% | -1.5% | -15.7% |
Grocery | +1.0% | +9.4% | +8.4% |
Pharmacy | -3.6% | -23.8% | -20.2% |
Wholesale Club | +13.0% | +2.6% | -10.4% |
Pharmaceutical purchases dropped the most in this segment, possibly as individuals cut back on their healthcare expenditures during this time. In fact, in an April 2020 McKinsey survey of physicians, 80% reported a decline in patient volumes.
Retail
With less foot traffic in malls and entire stores forced to close, sales of apparel plummeted both in physical locations and over e-commerce platforms.
Feb 25, 2020 YoY Spending | May 5, 2020 YoY Spending | Overall Change | |
---|---|---|---|
Apparel | -5.6% | -51.9% | -46.3% |
Office Supplies | -8.9% | -2.8% | +6.1% |
Pet Supplies | +2.7% | -18.5% | -21.2% |
Interestingly, sales of office supplies rose as many pivoted to working from home. Many parents also likely required more of these resources to home-school their children.
Restaurant
The food and beverage industry has been hard-hit by COVID-19. While many businesses turned to delivery services to stay afloat, those in fine dining were less able to rely on such a shift, and spiraled by 88.2% by May 5, 2020, year-over-year.
Feb 25, 2020 YoY Spending | May 5, 2020 YoY Change | Overall Change | |
---|---|---|---|
Casual Dining | -2.7% | -64.9% | -62.2% |
Fast Casual | 4.2% | -29.6% | -33.8% |
Fast Food | 2.0% | -20.9% | -22.9% |
Fine Dining | -18.6% | -88.2% | -69.6% |
Applebees or Olive Garden exemplify casual dining, while Panera or Chipotle characterize fast casual.
Food Delivery
Meanwhile, many consumers also shifted from eating out to home cooking. As a result, grocery delivery services jumped by over five-foldโwith consumers spending a whopping 558.4% more at its April 19, 2020 peak compared to last year.
Feb. 25, 2020 YoY Spending | May 5, 2020 YoY Spending | Overall Change | |
---|---|---|---|
Food Delivery | +18.8% | +67.1% | +48.3% |
Grocery Delivery | +23.0% | +419.7% | +396.7% |
Meal/ Snack Kit | +7.0% | -5.9% | -12.9% |
Food delivery services are also in high demand, with Doordash seeing the highest growth in U.S. users than any other food delivery app in April.
Travel
While all travel categories experienced an immense decline, cruises suffered the worst blow by far, down by 87.0% in YoY spending since near the start of the pandemic.
Feb 25, 2020 YoY Spending | May 5, 2020 YoY Spending | Overall Change | |
---|---|---|---|
Airline | -7.7% | -99.1% | -91.4% |
Car Rental | -6.3% | -86.0% | -79.7% |
Cruise | -18.7% | -105.7% | -87.0% |
Hotel | -7.0% | -85.9% | -78.9% |
Airlines have also come to a halt, nosediving by 91.4% in a 10-week span. In fact, governments worldwide have pooled together nearly $85 billion in an attempt to bail the industry out.
Hope on the Horizon?
Consumer spending offers a pulse of the economyโs health. These sharp drops in consumer spending fall in line with the steep decline in consumer confidence.
In fact, consumer confidence has eroded even more intensely than the stock marketโs performance this quarter, as observed when the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) is compared to the S&P 500 Index.
Many investors dumped their stocks as the coronavirus hit, but consumers tightened their purse strings even more. Yet, as the chart also shows, both the stock market and consumer sentiment are slowly but surely on the mend since April.
As the stay-at-home curtain cautiously begins to lift in the U.S., there may yet be hope for economic recovery on the horizon.
Markets
Mapped: 2023 Inflation Forecasts by Country
Inflation surged on a global scale in 2022, hitting record-level highs in many countries. Could it finally subside in 2023?

Mapped: 2023 Inflation Forecasts by Country
This was originally posted on Advisor Channel. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on financial markets that help advisors and their clients.
Inflation surged on a global scale in 2022, hitting record-level highs in many countries. Could it finally subside in 2023?
In the above infographic, we look to answer that question using the World Economic Outlook report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Not Yet Out of the Woods
While the IMF predicts that global inflation peaked in late 2022, rates in 2023 are expected to remain higher than usual in many parts of the world. Following the 8.8% global inflation rate in 2022, the IMF forecasts a 6.6% rate for 2023 and 4.3% rate for 2024 based on their most recent January 2023 update.
For the optimists, the good news is that the double-digit inflation that characterized nearly half the world in 2022 is expected to be less prevalent this year. For the pessimists, on the other hand, looking at countries like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Turkey, and Poland may suggest that we are far from out of the woods on a global scale.
Here are the countries with the highest forecasted inflation rates in 2023.
Country / Region | Projected Annual Inflation % Change 2023 |
---|---|
๐ฟ๐ผ Zimbabwe | 204.6% |
๐ป๐ช Venezuela | 195.0% |
๐ธ๐ฉ Sudan | 76.9% |
๐ฆ๐ท Argentina | 76.1% |
๐น๐ท Turkiye | 51.2% |
๐ฎ๐ท Islamic Republic of Iran | 40.0% |
๐ฑ๐ฐ Sri Lanka | 29.5% |
๐ช๐น Ethiopia | 28.6% |
๐ธ๐ท Suriname | 27.2% |
๐ธ๐ฑ Sierra Leone | 26.8% |
๐ธ๐ธ South Sudan | 21.7% |
๐ญ๐น Haiti | 21.2% |
๐ฌ๐ญ Ghana | 20.9% |
๐ต๐ฐ Pakistan | 19.9% |
๐ณ๐ฌ Nigeria | 17.3% |
๐พ๐ช Yemen | 17.1% |
๐ฒ๐ผ Malawi | 16.5% |
๐ต๐ฑ Poland | 14.3% |
๐ฒ๐ฉ Moldova | 13.8% |
๐ฒ๐ฒ Myanmar | 13.3% |
๐ญ๐บ Hungary | 13.3% |
๐ง๐พ Belarus | 13.1% |
๐ฐ๐ฌ Kyrgyz Republic | 12.4% |
๐ฌ๐ณ Guinea | 12.2% |
๐ฒ๐ณ Mongolia | 12.2% |
๐ช๐ฌ Egypt | 12.0% |
๐ฆ๐ด Angola | 11.8% |
๐ฐ๐ฟ Kazakhstan | 11.3% |
๐ธ๐น Sรฃo Tomรฉ and Prรญncipe | 11.2% |
๐ท๐ด Romania | 11.0% |
๐บ๐ฟ Uzbekistan | 10.8% |
๐ฆ๐ฟ Azerbaijan | 10.8% |
๐น๐ฒ Turkmenistan | 10.5% |
๐ธ๐ฐ Slovak Republic | 10.1% |
๐จ๐ฌ Democratic Republic of the Congo | 9.8% |
๐ฟ๐ฒ Zambia | 9.6% |
๐ช๐ช Estonia | 9.5% |
๐ฒ๐ช Montenegro | 9.2% |
๐ง๐ฉ Bangladesh | 9.1% |
๐ฌ๐ง United Kingdom | 9.0% |
While the above countries fight to sustain their purchasing power, some parts of the world are expected to continue faring exceptionally well against the backdrop of a widespread cost-of-living crisis. Many Asian countries, notably Japan, Taiwan, and China, are all predicted to see inflation lower than 3% in the upcoming year.
When it comes to low inflation, Japan in particular stands out. With strict price controls, negative interest rates, and an aging population, the country is expected to see an inflation rate of just 1.4% in 2023.
Inflation Drivers
While rising food and energy prices accounted for much of the inflation we saw in 2022, the IMF’s World Economic Outlook highlights that core inflation, which excludes food, energy, transport and housing prices, is now also a major driving factor in high inflation rates around the world.
What makes up core inflation exactly? In this case, it would include things like supply chain cost pressures and the effects of high energy prices slowly trickling down into numerous industries and trends in the labor market, such as the availability of jobs and rising wages. As these macroeconomic factors play out throughout 2023, each can have an effect on inflation.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are also still at play in this yearโs inflation forecasts. While the latter mainly played out in China in 2022, the possible resurgence of new variants continues to threaten economic recovery worldwide, and the war persists in leaving a mark internationally.
The confluence of macroeconomic factors currently at play is unlike what weโve seen in a long time. Though the expertise of forecasters can give us a general understanding, how they will actually play out is for us to wait and see.
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