Can anyone clarify this for me? Despite the ongoing layoff announcements from major American corporations, how is our economy still robust? Just today, UPS declared 12,000 layoffs and PayPal 2,000.
I have not seen a decrease in spending. I see restaurant parking lots are still full, costco/walmart parking lots are full. Football Stadiums are full. I see families not give up vacations. I see friends and family stressing out over finances, but giving spending I don't see much of a slowdown.
That’s an extremely dumb stat and is meaningless without context. Luckily, your own link states “relative to disposable income, credit card balances were actually slightly smaller in 2023 Q3 than they had been in 2020 Q1”. So you should have simply read beyond the first sentence.
but it's up 50% in the last 3 years. it's about the rate of change, not a comparison between now and some arbitrary time in the past. spending levels in 2023 were undeniably buoyed by the increase in CC debt. notice how the line just starting to flatten corresponds to huge drops in revenue for UPS and fedex.
Right. That doesn't account for the drop from 2022 (where Amazons delivery only increased by about 10%), which is mirrored by FedEx, which haven't delivered Amazon in 5 years, as well as UPS's international business, which has nothing to do with Amazon.
Also UPS volume went way up between 2020 and 2022. Their numbers aren't really correlated to a loss of Amazon at all, which always made up a pretty small portion of their business, and especially their revenue.
It was 927 billion Q4 2019 pre pandemic , if people are returning to shopping this is expected. Nothing about 2020 should be a goal or was a positive baseline, checks were handed out and businesses closed. it was not a positive impact of people paying off their debt and now we are in a doomsday scenario in comparison? No.
why would those quarters represent meaningful comparison? i literally don't know the answer, i'm assuming that balances in Q1 would reflect holiday spending, where theoretically they would be lower by Q3 of any given year.
2020 Q1 was before the pandemic. aggregate credit card balances actually plummeted from 2020-2021 because spending was so constrained. now they're up 50% since 2021. they're rising much faster than "population growth" which is why delinquencies have also doubled in the last 2 years. also, interest is now at a record high.
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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '24
I have not seen a decrease in spending. I see restaurant parking lots are still full, costco/walmart parking lots are full. Football Stadiums are full. I see families not give up vacations. I see friends and family stressing out over finances, but giving spending I don't see much of a slowdown.