Name: Americans stock up for holiday bargains
Uploaded: 2025-11-30T09:13:55.000Z
Duration: 8 min 41 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Modal verbs - A2

Despite recent polling showing Americans are not happy with the economy, this holiday weekend could see a record number of shoppers, whether it's online or in person.

To-infinitive

Our senior chief data analyst Harry Entit is here to run the numbers for us.

We're going to have Cyber Monday coming up in just two days.

And so this is a big season for shopping.

Of course, the stock, the start of the holiday shopping season, and we're expecting record numbers this weekend.

Record shoppers this weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

187 million Americans either shopping online or in person.

I must admit, I am not necessarily one to be shopping in person.

That's why I'm a much bigger fan of Cyber Monday than I am of Black Friday.

I prefer to spend my weekends at home or maybe going to a nice little Luncheonette.

But this 187 million is 3 million more than we had last year.

Again, record numbers shopping this weekend.

Of course, it's not all good news when it comes to the economy, Jessica, because we're in a bit of a K shape, right?

Whereby the top of the economic spectrum seems to be going along as if everything is normal.

While those on the lower rung facing tougher times.

And we see that when it comes to shopping this holiday season, expected holiday shopping in terms of money versus 2024 by household income, you can see that this is a real economic divide in terms of how much folks are expecting to spend this year versus last year.

When it comes to shopping during the holiday season, if you make less than $50,000 in your household income and the expected amount to be spent down, down 16% versus a year ago, you jump to the middle rung, 50 to 100,000, again down, but

Look at those making at least $100,000 in terms of their household income.

It's up about 5% or at least the expected amount versus last year.

Again, illustrative of this K shaped economy whereby the wealthier folks are spending as if nothing is wrong, since spending as if times are good, while those on the lower rung of the economic spectrum not seeing the good times nearly as much.

In fact seeing some bad times in a number of cases.

Of course, this is not the only sign that the economy is perhaps not as strong as some might necessarily want, of course, this holiday season, if you're going to be buying something, you might be putting it on your credit card.

And we're seeing some potentially troubling numbers when it comes to that credit card debt.

Well, let's take a look at credit card balance.

We're talking about the highest percentage since the Great Recession.

You know, you go back to quarter three of 2022, three years ago, 7.7.6% of all credit card balances were 90 days or more late, late in terms of their payment.

This percentage has really climbed in quarter three of 2025, which of course is last quarter where talking about 12.4%.

Jessica, I think the question is will this percentage become worse during the holiday season?

We've obviously seen that those who earn less are cutting back on their spending, expecting to cut back on their spending.

Of course, there are plenty wealthier people who also have big credit card debts as well.

So we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

But this to me is a troublesome sign for folks spending money that they simply put do not have.

And we're seeing it at a higher percentage since the Great Recession.

Hopefully we'll have some better news on the economy going forward.

But for now, Jessica Dean, this is all I got for you.

Americans say they're nervous about the economy, particularly about higher prices in a weak job market.

But many retail experts are forecasting hardy sales growth.

Mastercard pegs the spending growth at about 3.6% for the year.

Joining us now, Heatha Herzog, retail and consumer spending expert at her own firm, H Squared.

So what do you think so far about what we're seeing for this holiday shopping season?

This is going to be one of those major holiday shopping seasons.

As of now, we're looking at Black Friday numbers of almost $12 billion.

And also the spending online and in store was up about 4%.

Now I was tracking some of the real time statist coming out of the afterpay, the afterpay cash app ecosystem.

This is run by block and per neighborhood.

Los Angeles was 20 million and Chicago was 24 million.

And it also broke it down in neighborhoods.

My little neighborhood here on the Upper west side did almost a million dollars for Black Friday food and beverage, up 5.8%, which kind of shows that people aren't just just spending on clothing and objects, they're also going out to eat and buying those gift cards and also Apparel.

Retail was up 4% according to this, this afterpay block ecosystem.

So it's pretty interesting that spending is really there.

People are certainly going out in droves.

But we can't ignore the fact that this economy is bifurcated.

That K shaped economy, that, that larger spender, that one, that the, the, the high earner is the one that's really kind of spending and putting that on the credit card, or the lower income earner are taking more specific steps to spend, they're being a little bit more careful.

And so is that how you explain kind of this dichotomy between all these polls we get back where people say they're really nervous, they're really pessimistic about the economy and then these spending numbers that we're seeing that you're just listing.

I know I'm throwing a lot of statistics at you, but

I was looking at a report from the Federal Reserve bank of Boston, right.

It said that a lot of the consumer spending is being driven by higher income earners putting things on their credit card.

I've been saying this a lot, that it doesn't matter if the price of strawberries go up or price of a handbag goes up.

Meanwhile, the lower income spenders, they are the ones that are price sensitive.

So when we see that spending, that drive in spending is from that upper part of the K, that higher income earner that's putting it on the credit card, and

then they are paying off that credit card each month.

The lower income spender that's putting it on credit cards, they're the ones that have to be careful because if they are not paying that off every single month, those interest rates are going to bite them.

How is that factoring into any, to, to any of this?

Well, again, looking at the K shaped economy, right, the higher income earners not really that sensitive to inflation, but

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Americans stock up for holiday bargains

specific

significant

matter

potentially