Today, the JPMorgan Chase Institute released the Local Consumer Commerce Index (LCCI) for April 2016 - a monthly measure of year-over-year growth in everyday consumer spending. The Index analyzes debit and credit card spending by over 54 million anonymized Chase customers across 15 major U.S. cities.
This report provides a timely view of how the following cities and surrounding metro areas are faring economically both individually and in aggregate: Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Portland (OR), San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. By looking at actual financial transactions, LCCI offers an ongoing, dynamic view of the health and vibrancy of the U.S. consumer and the places where businesses operate.
The key highlights from the latest Index include:
- Across all 15 cities, spending grew by 1.1 percent year over year in April 2016, rebounding from flat growth in March.
- Among the 15 cities tracked, the smaller cities experienced faster spending growth in April 2016 (2.5 percent on average) than mid-sized and large cities.
- Among all of their customers, merchants experienced the fastest growth in sales to people who were from outside of the merchant’s metro area. “Different-region” spending has grown faster than “same-region” spending since early 2015.
The LCCI offers unique advantages over existing measures of consumer spending.
- The LCCI captures actual transactions, instead of self-reported measures of how consumers think they spend.
- The LCCI provides timely data on spending in 15 major metropolitan areas; such geographic granularity is unavailable in most other spending measures. These 15 cities mirror the geographic and economic diversity of larger metropolitan areas in the United States and account for 32 percent of retail sales nationwide.
- It also presents a more granular view of local consumer commerce through five important lenses: consumer age, consumer income, business size, product type, and consumer residence relative to the location of the business. For each lens, we show how different segments contributed to year-over-year spending growth.
- The LCCI captures economic activity in sectors that previously have not been well understood by other data sources. These include sectors such as food trucks, new merchants, and personal services.
Each release of the LCCI will describe the economic picture of local communities and provide a powerful tool for city development officials, businesses, investors, and statistical agencies to better understand the everyday economic health of consumers, businesses, and the places they care about.