Rajashri Chakrabarti and coauthors describe new spending data in Liberty Street Economics

Rajashri Chakrabarti and coauthors describe new spending data in Liberty Street Economics

On February 3, 2026, Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce, and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy introduce consumer-spending measures for the New York Fed’s Economic Heterogeneity Indicators. Using Numerator data, the authors say the measures can track spending across demographic groups more promptly than public surveys. Their example compares households by whether the respondent graduated from college. By December 2025, they report, college-graduate households’ nominal retail spending had grown about 2.4 percentage points faster than nongraduate households’ spending relative to January 2023. After adjusting for inflation with demographic-specific indices, the authors report that nongraduate households’ spending was about 4 percent above January 2023, while college-graduate households’ spending had risen by 6 percent. They say this difference is consistent with the story of a “K-shaped economy,” even as college graduates faced a relatively more difficult labor market in 2025. The post presents the measures as a way to track which groups may be driving or dialing back consumption; its example shows a spending divergence, not whether that gap will persist. The authors look forward to sharing further insights in later posts and indicator releases.

Publication: 21a09781-0b34-c31e-4efb-a971fbf46e99

attribution — pass: The reading correctly credits Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy, writing in the New York Fed's Liberty Street Economics. The findings and the K-shaped framing stay attributed to the authors. The page is a single post, not a listing.

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce, and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy

summary — uncertain: The reading summarizes the post faithfully. However, its interpretive conclusion uses the term K-shaped economy, which is never explained, and the definitions list is empty. A general reader may not know it describes some groups pulling ahead while others stagnate. Numerator is also not identified as a consumer analytics firm. Smallest repair: add a term-library tooltip for K-shaped economy and a brief description of Numerator.

The difference in the trend in retail spending between college graduates and nongraduates is consistent with the story of a “K-shaped economy.”

date — pass: The stated February 3, 2026 date matches the UTC day of originalPublished and the post's own dateline. The December 2025 figures predate publication, and the reading uses no later sidebar material. The page was modified in April 2026, but every cited passage is plainly part of the original article body. The kind is publisher-page, so no archive disclosure is needed.

February 3, 2026

support — pass: All the figures the reading cites appear in the source text: the 2.4 percentage-point nominal gap, real spending about 4 percent versus 6 percent above January 2023, the harder 2025 labor market for graduates, and the K-shaped framing. The 'driving or dialing back' phrasing lightly paraphrases the source's 'particularly salient' wording. The question about persistence is open-ended and adds no unsupported assumption. The later page edit does not appear to affect these core passages.

which groups in the economy may be particularly salient for overall consumption dynamics, and which groups, on the contrary, may be dialing consumption back

media — pass: No media is selected, and no verified candidates were supplied, so nothing was misidentified.