Money
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
It’s 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. Here’s 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-fold—with 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 economy’s 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 market’s 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.
Economy
Charted: Public Trust in the Federal Reserve
Public trust in the Federal Reserve chair has hit its lowest point in 20 years. Get the details in this infographic.

The Briefing
- Gallup conducts an annual poll to gauge the U.S. public’s trust in the Federal Reserve
- After rising during the COVID-19 pandemic, public trust has fallen to a 20-year low
Charted: Public Trust in the Federal Reserve
Each year, Gallup conducts a survey of American adults on various economic topics, including the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve.
More specifically, respondents are asked how much confidence they have in the current Fed chairman to do or recommend the right thing for the U.S. economy. We’ve visualized these results from 2001 to 2023 to see how confidence levels have changed over time.
Methodology and Results
The data used in this infographic is also listed in the table below. Percentages reflect the share of respondents that have either a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence.
Year | Fed chair | % Great deal or Fair amount |
---|---|---|
2023 | Jerome Powell | 36% |
2022 | Jerome Powell | 43% |
2021 | Jerome Powell | 55% |
2020 | Jerome Powell | 58% |
2019 | Jerome Powell | 50% |
2018 | Jerome Powell | 45% |
2017 | Janet Yellen | 45% |
2016 | Janet Yellen | 38% |
2015 | Janet Yellen | 42% |
2014 | Janet Yellen | 37% |
2013 | Ben Bernanke | 42% |
2012 | Ben Bernanke | 39% |
2011 | Ben Bernanke | 41% |
2010 | Ben Bernanke | 44% |
2009 | Ben Bernanke | 49% |
2008 | Ben Bernanke | 47% |
2007 | Ben Bernanke | 50% |
2006 | Ben Bernanke | 41% |
2005 | Alan Greenspan | 56% |
2004 | Alan Greenspan | 61% |
2003 | Alan Greenspan | 65% |
2002 | Alan Greenspan | 69% |
2001 | Alan Greenspan | 74% |
Data for 2023 collected April 3-25, with this statement put to respondents: “Please tell me how much confidence you have [in the Fed chair] to recommend the right thing for the economy.”
We can see that trust in the Federal Reserve has fluctuated significantly in recent years.
For example, under Alan Greenspan, trust was initially high due to the relative stability of the economy. The burst of the dotcom bubble—which some attribute to Greenspan’s easy credit policies—resulted in a sharp decline.
On the flip side, public confidence spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was likely due to Jerome Powell’s decisive actions to provide support to the U.S. economy throughout the crisis.
Measures implemented by the Fed include bringing interest rates to near zero, quantitative easing (buying government bonds with newly-printed money), and emergency lending programs to businesses.
Confidence Now on the Decline
After peaking at 58%, those with a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the Fed chair have tumbled to 36%, the lowest number in 20 years.
This is likely due to Powell’s hard stance on fighting post-pandemic inflation, which has involved raising interest rates at an incredible speed. While these rate hikes may be necessary, they also have many adverse effects:
- Negative impact on the stock market
- Increases the burden for those with variable-rate debts
- Makes mortgages and home buying less affordable
Higher rates have also prompted many U.S. tech companies to shrink their workforces, and have been a factor in the regional banking crisis, including the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Where does this data come from?
Source: Gallup (2023)
Data Notes: Results are based on telephone interviews conducted April 3-25, 2023, with a random sample of –1,013—adults, ages 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on this sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. See source for details.
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