Rich people are spending. Everyone else is cutting corners.

If America’s economy has a prosperous holiday season, the data suggests, we’ll have rich folks to thank. The top 10% of earners now account for roughly half of all consumer spending, according to a report by Moody’s Analytics. That’s a historic high. America’s economic growth increasingly relies on the well-paid. They accounted for 49.2% of spending in the second quarter of 2025. By comparison, top earners represented about 46% of spending at the same time in 2023, and about 43% in 2020. “Their financia ...