BofA on USA: Weekly spending update through May 23

Research evidence excerpt

BofA on USA: Weekly spending update through May 23

Disclaimer

Selected Bank of America (“BAC”) transaction data are used to inform the

macroeconomic views expressed in this report and should be considered in the context

of other economic indicators and publicly available information. In certain instances, the

data may provide directional and/or predictive value. The data used are not

comprehensive; they are based on aggregated and anonymized selections of BAC data

and may reflect a degree of selection bias and limitations on the data available.

Methodology explained

Readers should be aware that although the BAC datasets utilized in our analysis

represent a significant number of data points, they nevertheless present a degree of

selection bias, including but not limited to income levels and geographies. In addition,

the data is limited to debit and credit cards and does not include other payment

methods such as cash or checks.

Data regarding merchants who receive payments are identified and classified by the

Merchant Categorization Code (MCC) defined by financial services companies. The data

are mapped using proprietary methods from the MCCs to the North American Industry

Classification System (NAICS), which is also used by the Census Bureau, in order to

classify spending data by subsector. Spending data may also be classified by other

proprietary methods not using MCCs.

BAC data used in this report include spending from active US households (HHs) only.

Spending from corporate cards is excluded.

Our methodology for calculating the growth rates for daily data: we calculate the %y/y

growth rate by matching calendar days (Jan 1, 2026 matched to Jan 1, 2025). The %

change is calculated based on the 7-day moving average of spending levels.