We are enhancing our set of Economic Heterogeneity Indicators (EHIs) by adding a set of metrics on consumer spending with data presented by income, education, race and ethnicity, age, and urban status. The data will help track the evolution of aggregate behavior by analyzing the spending of specific groups in a more timely manner than is possible using public surveys.
Background
Our data comes from the consumer analytics firm Numerator, which maintains an elective panel of 200,000 U.S. consumers that it reweighs to match Census aggregates across multiple dimensions. Numerator retail sales aggregates do a good job of capturing consumer spending behavior in the U.S. economy, successfully matching consumer spending growth from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MARTS). Numerator reports data on consumer spending by spending category and by the multiple heterogeneities listed above. This new set of metrics will give us a unique opportunity to track—at a granular level and virtually in real time—which groups in the economy may be particularly salient for overall consumption dynamics, and which groups, on the contrary, may be dialing consumption back.
Consumer Spending Grows Faster for College Graduates
The charts below present examples of what the EHIs can show about heterogeneities in consumer spending, in this case, by education. In the top panel, we see nominal growth in retail spending (excluding autos) relative to January 2023 for households in which the respondent has graduated from college (in red) and households in which the respondent has not graduated from college (in blue). By December 2025, households in which the respondent is a college graduate have experienced growth in retail spending about 2.4 percentage points faster than households in which the respondent is not a college graduate, with most of the divergence between the two sets of households taking place by spring 2024.
Spending of College Graduates Outpaces Spending of Nongraduates Since 2023
Nominal cumulative growth (indexed to 2023)
Real cumulative growth (index to 2023)
Note: Real spending uses corresponding demographic prices.
The bottom panel shows growth in retail spending for the two educational groups adjusted for inflation. We deflate retail spending using our demographic-specific inflation indices. We see that real retail spending for households with no college graduate respondent was actually lower in 2023 and most of 2024, than it was in January 2023 and currently stands at only about 4 percent higher than it was in January 2023. On the other hand, while college graduates’ retail spending stagnated in 2023-24, by December 2025 it has risen by 6 percent relative to January 2023.
Despite the relatively more difficult labor market faced by college graduates in 2025, they are continuing to consume more than nongraduates do at the same or higher rate than they did in the previous few years. The difference in the trend in retail spending between college graduates and nongraduates is consistent with the story of a “K-shaped economy.”
We are looking forward to sharing more insights from Numerator’s consumer spending data in Liberty Street Economics and in subsequent releases of the Economic Heterogeneity Indicators.
Rajashri Chakrabarti is an economic research advisor in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group.
Thu Pham is a research analyst in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group.
Beck Pierce is a research analyst in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group.
Maxim Pinkovskiy is an economic research advisor in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group.
How to cite this post:
Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce, and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy, “A New Dataset for Consumer Spending in the New York Fed EHIs,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, February 3, 2026, https://doi.org/10.59576/lse.20260203a
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Disclaimer
The views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author(s).
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