NY Fed adds near real-time consumer spending metrics to EHIs
Feb 27th 2026
The New York Fed has added Numerator-based consumer spending measures to its Economic Heterogeneity Indicators, offering more timely, granular tracking of consumption by income, education, race, age, and urban status.
- NY Fed added consumer spending metrics to its Economic Heterogeneity Indicators using Numerator’s panel of 200,000 consumers reweighted to match Census aggregates.
- The new data break down spending by income, education, race and ethnicity, age, and urban status and closely track Census retail sales measures.
- The metrics enable near real-time tracking of which demographic groups are driving or slowing aggregate consumption.
- By December 2025, households with a college graduate showed nominal retail spending growth about 2.4 percentage points higher than households without a college graduate, with most divergence appearing by spring 2024.
- Using demographic-specific inflation adjustments, real retail spending in December 2025 was about 6 percent above January 2023 for college graduate households and about 4 percent above for nongraduate households.
- The spending gap between college graduates and nongraduates is consistent with a K-shaped pattern in consumption across groups.