The Regional Side of the Story: K‑Shaped Pattern in Region, Wider Gap in Gas Spending

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce, and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy In this post, we use the inaugural release of our regional consumer spending indicators to ask whether these patterns hold for a significant portion of the Second District, and how regional spending patterns by income have been similar to or different from the national patterns we documented earlier . We find similar K‑shaped patterns in both retail and gas spending in our region as we do in the nation, with the K‑shaped pattern in gasoline in response to the recent gas price shock being more pronounced in the region. Introducing the Regional Consumer Spending EHIs This post accompanies the release of the Economic Heterogeneity Indicators (EHIs) through April 2026, which for the first time feature regional consumer spending indicators based on microdata from the market research firm Numerator. These indicators demonstrate our commitment to understanding how economic trends affect different segments of society not just in the nation, but in this region. To create the regional consumer spending EHIs, we narrow the panel to participants in Numerator’s sample who live in zip codes within a significant portion of the Second District (New York State, northern New Jersey, and Fairfield County, CT. The Numerator panel does not cover Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands). We verify the demographics of the panel participants to closely match the demographics of the Second District in the American Community Survey (ACS). We also verify that aggregate growth rates of retail spending excluding autos and excluding nonstore spending using the Numerator data for New York State and New Jersey closely match the corresponding growth rates in the Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MARTS ) . We are therefore confident that our Second District consumer spending indicators can be trusted to give us accurate trends for different demographic groups within the Second District. To obtain real Second District spending growth rates, we deflate retail and gas spending by goods-specific demographic prices based on city-level goods-specific CPIs, and goods-specific spending shares for high, middle, and low-income households. Similar K-Shaped Retail Spending Pattern in the Second District and in the Nation National nominal cumulative growth (indexed to 2023) Regional nominal cumulative growth (indexed to 2023) National real cumulative growth (January 2023 = 100%) Regional real cumulative growth (January 2023 = 100%) Sources: Numerator Consumer Spending Data, Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics via Haver Analytics, and authors’ calculations.​ Regional charts use three-month moving averages. Notes: Real spending uses corresponding demographic retail prices. Income denotes annual household income. The above chart shows nominal and real retail spending ex auto from the EHIs at the national level and for the Second District for high (earning $125,000+ a year), middle ($40,000-$125,000) and low-income (less than $40,000) households, in gold, red, and blue respectively. The high-income households represent approximately one third of all households. Retail spending ex auto in the nation includes nonstore (online) purchases while retail spending ex auto in the Second District excludes nonstore purchases to match the analogous concept in MARTS. Both nominal and real retail spending growth in the Second District show a K-shaped pattern that is very similar to the national trend. In every month, cumulative spending growth since 2023 for high-income households exceeds that for middle-income households, while in almost every month, cumulative spending growth for middle-income households exceeds cumulative spending growth for low-income households. By April 2026, real retail ex auto ex nonstore spending has grown by 4.7 percent relative to January 2023 for the high-income households in the region, but only by 1.8 percent for the middle-income households and has actually shrunk by 0.6 percent for the low-income households. The difference in real spending growth rates between high and low-income groups in the region is almost the same as it is in the nation. Nominal Gas Spending Decreased in the Nation but Increased in the Region until February 2026 National nominal cumulative growth (indexed to 2023) Regional nominal cumulative growth (indexed to 2023) National real cumulative growth (January 2023 = 100%) Regional real cumulative growth (January 2023 = 100%) Sources: Numerator Consumer Spending Data, Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics via Haver Analytics, and authors’ calculations.​ Regional charts use three-month moving averages. Notes: Real spending uses corresponding demographic gas prices. Income denotes annual household income. We now turn to trends in gasoline consumption in the nation and in the region. The above chart shows nominal and real gas station spending in both the nation and the region for high-, middle-, and low-income households. As we are looking at spending in physical gas stations, the exclusion of nonstore spending in the regional data is no longer an issue and the two sets of series are directly comparable.