A surge in fuel prices is forcing a record number of Americans to change how they shop, pushing price sensitivity to an all-time high even as overall consumer confidence holds steady.
The Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) ticked down a minor 0.4 points this week to 87.9 for U.S. adults overall. While lower- and middle-income households saw modest gains, those were wiped out by a 2.5-point drop among higher-income earners.
However, underlying anxiety about inflation tells a more volatile story. Morning Consult’s weekly Indirect Consumer Inflation Expectations measure jumped 0.6 percentage points for all adults, signaling widespread worry that recent price hikes are here to stay.
This anxiety follows last week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) data for April, which came in hot at 0.6% and 1.4%, respectively. Compounding the issue, retail gas prices have climbed to their highest level since 2022 due to the ongoing impact of the Iran War, hitting household budgets directly.
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Data from Morning Consult’s May Price Response Indicators reveal that 50.3% of U.S. adults report that high prices are actively altering their purchasing behavior. This is just a fraction below the all-time peak of 50.8% recorded in June 2022.
While the total number of stressed shoppers mirrors the 2022 peak, how people cope has changed drastically. In late 2022, 24.5% of consumers simply absorbed the higher costs and bought what they needed anyway. Today, that number has plummeted to 15.9%. Instead, consumers are actively pushing back. The share of Americans trading down to lower-cost alternatives has climbed to 9.0%, and the portion describing themselves as strictly “price sensitive” reached 25.4%—both all-time highs for the data series.
Shoppers are primarily switching to cheaper alternatives in the exact same categories they did three years ago, though at much higher rates. In May, consumers reported trading down on paper goods (16.9%), personal care items (16.2%), groceries (14.2%), and apparel (13.0%). In some of these categories, the rate of trading down is 4 to 5 percentage points higher than it was during the 2022 inflation spike.
Gasoline remains the single largest pain point for consumers. A staggering 68.5% of adults report being directly affected by fuel prices, outstripping any other spending category by roughly 15 percentage points.
Economists note a key structural difference between current financial pressures and those of three years ago. In 2022, inflation was broad-based, fueled by severe supply chain disruptions that drove up costs across durable goods and multiple industries simultaneously. Today, the economic pressure is highly concentrated. Fuel costs are acting as the primary anchor on household budgets, while general goods categories are showing less severe strain than they did during the post-pandemic peak.
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