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The U.S. Economy Depends More Than Ever on Rich People
The highest-earning 10% of Americans have increased their spending far beyond inflation. Everyone else hasn’t.
By Rachel Louise Ensign
Many Americans are pinching pennies, exhausted by high prices and stubborn inflation. The well-off are spending with abandon.
The top 10% of earners—households making about $250,000 a year or more—are splurging on everything from vacations to designer handbags, buoyed by big gains in stocks, real estate and other assets.
Those consumers now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. Three decades ago, they accounted for about 36%.
All this means that economic growth is unusually reliant on rich Americans continuing to shell out. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated that spending by the top 10% alone accounted for almost one-third of gross domestic product.
Between September 2023 and September 2024, the high earners increased their spending by 12%. Spending by working-class and middle-class households, meanwhile, dropped over the same period.
“The finances of the well-to-do have never been better, their spending never stronger and the economy never more dependent on that group,” said Zandi, who oversaw the analysis, which was based on data from the Federal Reserve. The analysis runs through the third quarter of 2024 because that is the most recent data available.
Taken together, well-off people have increased their spending far beyond inflation, while everyone else hasn’t. The bottom 80% of earners spent 25% more than they did four years earlier, barely outpacing price increases of 21% over that period. The top 10% spent 58% more.
A stock market selloff or decline in home values that rattles the confidence of the top 10% and causes them to cut back would have a significant effect on the economy. Consumer sentiment is starting to slide overall, including for the wealthiest third of consumers, thanks in part to tariff threats.
The buying power of the richest Americans, who Zandi said tend to be older and more educated, stems in part from the swelling values of homes and the stock market over the past several years. While rising asset prices are extolled as a sign of a good economy, they also are widening the gap between those who own property and stocks, and those who don’t.
Vivek Trivedi, 38 years old, saved up during the pandemic, and in 2022 and 2023 he bought three investment properties in the Indianapolis area, where he lives. His own housing costs are stable because he locked in a sub-3% mortgage on his primary home when he refinanced while interest rates were low during the pandemic.
He and his wife, Purva Trivedi, both work in the pharmaceutical industry. They earn more than $350,000 a year combined, about 45% more than before the pandemic. They have two small children and support his parents, who live with them.
“We’ve made some strategic moves in our own careers and also in investment portfolios,” Vivek Trivedi said. “We haven’t really had to cut back.”
Vivek Trivedi took up road cycling and bought a $3,000 bike. The couple noticed their grocery bill rising but agreed that buying organic products was too important to them to give up. This year, they are budgeting about $10,000 to $15,000 for travel, including a potential trip to their native India.
During the pandemic, Americans across the spectrum saved at record levels. They spent less because they were stuck at home and received extra money from the government’s various stimulus measures. By early 2022, households socked away an extra $2.6 trillion.
Then inflation struck, and prices rose sharply. Most Americans turned to their extra savings to keep up with their rising bills. But the top 10% of earners kept most of what they had saved up.
Affluent people also found themselves with assets, such as stocks, that suddenly were worth far more. The net worth of the top 20% of earners has risen by more than $35 trillion, or 45%, since the end of 2019, according to Federal Reserve data. Net worth grew at a similar rate for everyone else, but it translated to a lot less money: an increase of $14 trillion for the bottom 80%.
Bank of America found that credit- and debit-card spending by their richest third of customers was growing faster than spending by the lowest-earning third. Certain categories of spending were especially robust. The top 5% of households spent more than 10% more on luxury goods abroad compared with a year earlier.
“They’re going to Paris and loading up their suitcases with luxury bags and shoes and clothes,” said David Tinsley, senior economist for the Bank of America Institute.