Danish card data suggests spending continues to be stable around 10% above 2019- levels in June. With prices continuing up, this implies very limited growth in real terms compared to three years ago. However, it also confirms the impression that spending continues to hold up despite rising prices and very low consumer sentiment. Hence, there is still no signs of precautionary savings increasing in favor of consumer spending.
We are, however, seeing a continued shift in spending patterns, with services continuing to increase, while retailing is weakening, not least in real terms. In nominal terms, grocery spending continues to trend down and is now only marginally above 2019 levels. Considering that food prices alone are up more than 11% for the period, this implies a significant real contraction in grocery spending.
Service spending continues to perform well, with particularly spending in packaged holidays seeing a real boom at the moment, with spending at travel agencies up by more than 40% last week compared to 2019. This might be due to a shift in the timing of holiday purchases, with fewer consumers buying well in advance of the summer holiday than usual, which in turn pushes up spending in June.
Gasoline prices have soared in recent weeks, and spending in gas stations is taking up around 5.2% of total spending in our data, compared to 4% normally.
