Credit-card data shows Americans are cutting back – especially on restaurants and groceries

By Ahmet Kaya

High-frequency card-payment data lets CEIC users monitor US consumer spending in near-real time. It’s showing that Americans appear to be cutting back on their food outlays in the face of sustained #inflation.

Granular, daily data by spending category shows that supermarket visits are becoming less frequent. It’s also notable that consumers are making fewer trips to fast-food #restaurants in particular (full-service restaurants and bars are not seeing the same decline).

Total card transaction growth slowed to 0.8% y/y in early October from 2.6% in mid-September. Food services and food stores together subtracted 1.4 percentage points from growth over that period; most other categories were little changed. The pullback is most pronounced among households that devote a larger share of their budgets to food – i.e., lower-income quintiles.

CEIC users, access the chart here

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