Americans across age groups are feeling the same economic squeeze, but the way they respond is starting to reveal a sharper generational divide. The PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Economic Pressures Split the Generations as Each Rethinks the Basics,” finds that financial strain is now broad enough to touch...
Financial stress is doing more than pushing consumers to hunt for lower prices. It is also changing how they organize purchases, where they shop and which payment tools they trust most when money feels tight. That is the broad takeaway from “The New Checkout: Crimped Consumers...
Household finances are showing resilience on the surface, but the underlying sentiment points to a more constrained consumer. The PYMNTS Consumer Expectations Index measures whether households believe they have the capacity to act on their outlook, combining views on finances, job security and purchasing conditions....
Every payday, millions of American workers face some version of the same problem: The bill is due today, the paycheck arrives Friday and they must somehow cover the distance between those two moments. For Labor Economy workers—the warehouse associates, delivery drivers, caregivers, cooks and retail...
Young consumers in the United States are doing more than ever to stay afloat, but new data shows that effort alone is no longer restoring their sense of control. “Generations Under Pressure: How Younger Consumers Are Coping With Higher Living Costs,” the February installment of...
Popular commentary portrays Generation Z as financially reckless, a cohort supposedly driven by impulse purchases, social media trends and a casual approach to money. The data tells a different story. Evidence from both Federal Reserve research and PYMNTS Intelligence suggests that younger Americans are neither...
Corporate earnings releases and conference calls often serve as a real-time test of economic narratives. Management observations offer insight into how consumers behave at the checkout counter and whether they are clicking buy buttons on their devices and computers. The most recent round of earnings...
There’s an affordability crisis rocking households in the United States. Housing, insurance, healthcare, childcare, transportation and other categories once expected to scale gradually with income have instead shifted upward in step changes, all while wage growth remains uneven and employment stability more fragmented. Data from...
As the PYMNTS audience saw in Monday’s newsletter (March 2) there’s some wisdom to be gleaned from crowds. The occasion was the launch of the PYMNTS Consumer Expectations Index, a new report that’s built to close the blind spots in legacy sentiment gauges, it blends...