经济周刊：美国消费者还好，但这不是消费者驱动的扩张

William Blair The University of Michigan’s survey on consumer senti-ment reached its lowest reading in history this month(exhibit 1). Incredibly, the sentiment is lower today thanit was during COVID, the global financial crisis, and evenlower than 9/11, the stock market crash of 1987, andany recession since 1978. What’s so surprising is that theeconomy is not in recession and the unemployment rate iswell below average at 4.3%. So what gives?In thisEco- 44.6%. It then climbed to 62% in 1958, before dippingback to 58.6% in 1967. From the 1967 low to the peak in 2009 (69%), the U.S. wasvery much in the “age of the consumer.” Over this stretch,nominal PCE increased at a CAGR of 7.3% (or 3.2% real),compared to GDP of 6.9% (2.9% real). For those investingin consumer-related stocks, this meant that the wind was As with most major macro structural changes takingplace in the economy, this rising share of consumptionrelative to aggregate GDP was largely driven by demo-graphics. It started with the baby boomers entering theworkforce in the mid- to late 1960s, followed by womenincreasingly being included in the workforce through the1970s and 1980s. The population in the 1990s was thensupplemented by an increasing number of immigrants as Today, the PCE as a share of GDP is 68% and still lowerthan that 2009 peak. Between then and now, its CAGR hasbeen 4.8%, compared to 4.9% for aggregate GDP; henceconsumption has been slightly underpacing aggregate de-mand. This slower pace of consumption and falling shareof GDP look set to continue in 2026, given that this year We like simplicity. And we believe one of the simplest big-picture metrics with regard to the U.S. consumer is the For investors in the consumer-related area, this equatesto much tougher comps and an aggregate TAM that is flat Most investors today assume that the consumer’s shareof GDP has always been close to 70%, when in reality, in Meanwhile, cash levels and holdings in money market fundsas a share of total financial assets are exceptionally high.Exhibit 7 shows cash as a share of total financial assets is4.1%, which is the highest it has been since 1967, outsiderecessions and the COVID excess savings bump. It is also far The share of assets in money market funds is similarly thehighest on record outside recessionary periods where the We view this as an important factor in the consumer’sarmor that should offer some protection against anyheadwinds from higher energy prices and potentially The fact that employment growth is now negative(household survey)—the only period excluding 2024when growth has declined outside a recession—is highly unusual and concerning (exhibit 8). However, once again,we believe this weakness is more a reflection of the de- William Blair been a steady decline in the aggregate employment-to-population ratio (slowing due to retiring boomers), whilethe ratio for prime age workers (25- to 54-year-olds)remains near its record highs and is inconsistent withmuch weaker employment demand. Furthermore, simplylistening to what many companies have been telling us, Many investors and the members of the FOMC are nowcoming around to this view, but this supply-side view ofa softer labor market was far from the consensus severalmonths ago, when the market was demanding up to threerate cuts from the Fed to offset this weakness. For exam- It is clear to me that the data are saying that therehas been a greater reduction in demand than supply.I’m not seeing or hearing stories of an acceleration inwage growth, an increase in job openings, or a rise in Five months later inmid-April, Waller now believes thatthe slowdown is more related to developments on thesupply side than on the demand side, and that no cuts The second development is what we have come tomore fully recognize about the supply side of thelabor market. Over the course of last year, we gotthe details of how net immigration, which was 2.3million in 2024, fell to a minimal level in 2025 andis continuing at a very low level in 2026. This pat-tern has lowered population growth and, hence,the growth of the labor force. This change in im-migration, combined with the continued aging of During the COVID inflation surge, the Fed (re)discoveredthat the public really,reallydoes not like high inflation,and this is showing up once again in the University ofMichigan sentiment index. In exhibit 11, we compare the University of MichiganConsumer Sentiment Survey and the Conference Board’smeasure of Consumer Confidence. The main differencebetween the two is that the Michigan survey’s questionsare more weighted toward buying plans, which better We think this supply divergence has been clear for a whileand can be seen by simply looking at the employment- William Blair of the state of the labor market. According to consumersfrom the Conference Board’s survey, the economic situa-tion today is only a little below the historical average and Over the last few months, many consumers have beenbenef