July 2021 Earnest Analytics (FKA Earnest Research) Spend Index

The Earnest Analytics (FKA Earnest Research) Spend Index, a measure of sales growth for 2,500+ U.S. consumer discretionary and staples businesses (read more below), slightly decelerated due to online weakness. Both year-over-year and year-over-two-year online growth decelerated since June, while in-store growth accelerated. This dynamic suggests that the impact of mounting COVID-19 cases did not fully play out in July consumer spending given brick-and-mortar sales growth, which was mirrored by year-over-two-year foot traffic growth in most states. However, there was a Yo2Y deceleration in Air Travel and a sharp decline in in-store restaurants sales in the last week of July (not pictured in chart).

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About the Earnest Analytics (FKA Earnest Research) Spend Index:

The Earnest Analytics (FKA Earnest Research) Spend Index (ERSI) is an alternative data-driven measure of consumer spending that tracks spend across 2,500+ large national brands in major consumer discretionary and staples subcategories. The near real-time data is derived from the credit and debit spend of millions of de-identified U.S. consumers. Advantages of using ERSI include better representation of e-commerce spend, disaggregation by geography, and online versus in-store breakouts.