The top 10% drive half of US spending

The American consumer is often treated as one giant character in the economic story. Confident. Resilient. Still spending.

But that version hides something important. The US consumer is not one person. It is a hierarchy. And right now, the top of that hierarchy is carrying far more of the economy than it used to. In April 2025, the top 10% of US households accounted for 49.2% of total consumer spending. The bottom 80% accounted for 36.9%.

That is a remarkable split.

It means almost half of all US consumer spending is now driven by one-tenth of households. Not one-tenth of the population spending a bit more than everyone else, but one-tenth of households carrying a vast share of demand in the world’s largest economy.

This matters because consumer spending is the engine of the US economy. When people talk about the strength of America, they often talk about innovation, markets, technology or the dollar. But underneath much of it sits household consumption. The US economy keeps moving because people keep buying. The question is: which people?

This chart suggests the answer has changed. In the early 1990s, the bottom 80% accounted for a larger share of spending than the top 10%. That relationship has now reversed. The top 10% have become more important to the spending story, while the bottom 80% have lost ground.

Part of this reflects wealth. Higher-income households own more financial assets, property and business wealth. When markets rise and asset prices inflate, they feel richer and have more capacity to spend. They are also less exposed to the immediate pain of higher interest rates, rent, food and energy costs than households living closer to the edge.

But this is not simply a story about rich people buying more luxury goods. It is a story about economic dependence.

If the spending power of the top 10% keeps rising, the headline consumer data can look healthy even while much of the country feels squeezed. Restaurants can be full, airports busy, stock markets strong and luxury brands resilient, while millions of households are cutting back on ordinary purchases.

That creates a dangerous illusion. Policymakers, investors and businesses may look at aggregate spending and assume the consumer is fine. But the aggregate can be flattered by the people least likely to break first.

The US economy has always had inequality. That is not new. What this chart shows is how inequality changes the way we read the economy itself.

A consumer boom led by the rich is still a boom. But it is a narrower one. It depends more heavily on asset prices, high incomes and the confidence of households that already have a large financial cushion. That makes the economy look stronger than it feels for many people.

It also makes it more fragile than the headline numbers suggest.