Strong holiday sales defy weak consumer sentiment

Andre Lewis said he’s “anxious 364 days of the year.” Yet the rideshare and delivery driver wants to make it a special holiday season for his 7-year-old daughter.

“I told myself I’d keep it modest,” said the 31-year-old, who lives in New York City. But he said his daughter wants a pink keyboard that lights up, and he’ll buy it for her — “even if it’s a little over budget.”

“Christmas is the one day I let myself stop worrying,” he said.

For many U.S. consumers like Lewis, economic worries have cast a cloud over an otherwise cheery season. Consumer sentiment fell to its lowest level in more than three years in early November, close to its all-time low, according to University of Michigan’s monthly survey. The metric posted a slight uptick in December.

Yet so far, that downbeat backdrop hasn’t stopped shopping this year or dragged down the typical kickoff of the holiday season. That apparent contrast has left investors and economists wondering whether — and when — jitters over high costs of living, increased tariffs and a tepid job market will start to emerge more in spending data.

Across the country, nearly 203 million U.S. shoppers hit retailers’ stores and websites during the five-day stretch from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday — the highest turnout in at least nine years, according to the National Retail Federation, which surveys shoppers to calculate the annual estimate.

Big-box and club retailers, including Walmart, Best Buy and Costco, topped Wall Street’s quarterly sales expectations, and executives said they saw an encouraging start to the crucial shopping season. Meanwhile, discretionary retailers like Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle also exceeded quarterly estimates, and company leaders said consumer demand has been steady.

“I know everybody’s looking for cracks in consumer health,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey told CNBC in late November. “It feels pretty consistent to us.”

Some executives also said lower-income consumers, who have felt economic pressures most acutely over the last year, have kept spending.

“The headline is that we feel very good about the lower-income customer,” Burlington Stores CEO Michael O’Sullivan said when the company quarterly results last month. “This customer has been very resilient. When we look at our stores in lower-income trade areas, they continue to outperform the chain.”

Some key dynamics have supported U.S. consumer spending, even as concerns about an AI investment bubble and layoffs by companies including Verizon and Target cloud the 2026 economic outlook. Unemployment numbers are still low, though the labor market has slowed as the private sector unexpectedly lost jobs in November, ADP figures show. The government will provide the clearest picture of the job market in months on Tuesday when it releases November data…