Americans are planning to spend less money in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales this year as the nation’s economic outlook grows gloomier, new research suggests.
A survey by the accountancy and business consulting giant Deloitte this month found that U.S. consumers expected to spend an average of $622 in the four days starting on Thanksgiving, compared to $650 last year.
That 4 percent drop was a marked break with the trend between 2020 and 2024, when expected spending rose continuously by an average of 13 per cent per year.
“Cost pressures and financial constraints are likely to result in more cautious Black Friday / Cyber Monday spending,” the report’s authors wrote. “Younger shoppers continue to sustain spending levels, but older generations signal greater caution.”
The drop was much sharper among shoppers earning less than $50,000 and those earning over $200,000, who said they planned to cut back their spending by 12 percent and 18 percent respectively.
It comes as the U.S. economy shows increasing signs of trouble, with unemployment and inflation both continuing to gradual rise and consumer confidence reaching its lowest levels on record this month.
Though GDP growth remained strong in the three months ending in June, and job growth solid as of September, economists expect the recent government shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — to leave a “lasting mark”.
Meanwhile Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that the economy is doing better than ever before, while falsely claiming that inflation is down — though he conceded on Saturday that his “great work” has “not yet been fully appreciated.”
A new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office has predicted that Trump’s aggressive tariffs program, which many economists believe is contributing to economic gloom, will cut national debt payments by $1 trillion less than expected over the next 10 years.
Deloitte’s research echoes the results of a survey by the University of Michigan this month, which found that consumer confidence in the U.S. economy has dropped by nearly one third since last November to 51 percent.
Another poll found that 60 percent of Americans believe that Trump is sugar-coating the real situation, including four in 10 Republicans.
Voters swept the Democrats to victory in numerous state and local elections earlier this month, in no small part due to concerns about prices, causing Trump to declare “affordability” a “new word” and a “con job”.
