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GDP & Growth · October 12, 2026 · 2 min read

Fed survey adds direct spending data, with limits on K-shaped recovery claims

By Econ Data Tools Editorial Team

Published October 12, 2026 • Updated October 12, 2026

Reviewed by Instinct editorial QC

The 2025 survey adds total annual spending measures and better coverage at the top. Researchers say one cross-section cannot establish spending trends.

Federal Reserve researchers described new direct spending questions in the 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances in an October 9 research note. The addition lets researchers examine income, wealth and spending in the same survey, including wealthy households that other spending datasets often miss. The total-spending question covers the previous 12 months and includes durable and nondurable purchases. Its scope excludes rent, mortgage payments and retirement contributions. The note compares this top-down question with the Consumer Expenditure Survey's more detailed, bottom-up spending measures rather than treating the two as identical. The researchers report aggregate spending of $6.58 trillion in the 2025 SCF, compared with $7.02 trillion in the comparable 2024 Consumer Expenditure measure. They note that 2025 CE data were not available at the time of writing. Different years and measurement methods mean that comparison is not a spending-growth calculation. The note estimates that the top 1 percent of spenders account for 9 percent of spending, compared with top-percent shares of 19 percent for income and 32 percent for wealth. It also reports that the top 10 percent of families ranked by either income or wealth account for 28 percent of spending. These rankings and measures should not be mixed into a claim that the top 1 percent by income spends 9 percent. The researchers describe only partial consistency with a K-shaped recovery. Some lower-income families more often report reduced spending, income or financial well-being, but higher-income families do not appear to be disproportionately increasing spending in the qualitative questions. The note explicitly says that the first survey wave with total-spending questions cannot establish aggregate spending changes by income group. Limits: these are the authors' research findings, not a Federal Reserve policy decision or a complete national-accounts spending measure. Retrospective survey questions, differences in survey coverage and a single cross-section limit causal and trend claims. Future survey waves will be needed to measure the dynamics more directly.

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