vs Last Month
+$50B
Steady monthly growth — services-led.
68% of GDP · Total Household Spending
Personal Consumption (PCE)
$19.50T
+$0.05Tvs. last month
Past 12 months$18.8T – $19.55T
vs Last Year+$0.65T
YoY (nominal)+3.4%
% of GDP~68%
PCE at $19.50T annualized — fresh all-time high. Households continue to spend, with services (~70% of total) doing the heavy lifting.
Historical trend
Monthly · annualized $T.
Source: FRED · PCE (BEA)
The long view: since 1959
From $0.30T to $19.50T — 65× over 67 years.
ATH $19.50T · May 2026
1959 baseline $0.30T
Today $19.50T
How today stacks up
vs Last Year
+$650B
+3.4% nominal · +0.3% real.
5-Year Average
$17.85T
Today is $1.65T above the 5-yr mean.
% of GDP
~68%
Consumer spending dominates U.S. output.
Use this number
Tools for household budgets.
About Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE)
Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) measures all spending by U.S. households — goods, services, durables, nondurables. It's the largest component of GDP, accounting for roughly 68% of total U.S. economic output. Today's $19.50T annualized means households are collectively spending about $1.63T per month or roughly $53B every day.
Why this matters more than retail sales
Retail sales capture only goods + restaurants. PCE captures everything households spend money on — healthcare (the biggest single category), housing services, financial services, recreation, travel, education. About 70% of PCE is services, which retail sales largely misses. When economists talk about "consumer-led economy" or "consumer-spending strength," they mean PCE more than retail sales.
Reading today's level
PCE has grown from $0.30T in 1959 to $19.50T today — 65× in 67 years. Today's level is a fresh all-time high. The composition has shifted dramatically: services were ~45% of consumer spending in 1959 vs ~70% today. The decline of goods spending (autos, appliances) and rise of services (especially healthcare and digital services) drives most of the long-run story.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
PCE is about 2.2× retail sales because it includes services (healthcare, housing services, finance, etc.) that retail sales doesn't capture. Both move together but PCE is broader and more comprehensive — it's what feeds directly into GDP.
No — the Fed targets Core PCE inflation, which is the year-over-year change in the PCE price index excluding food and energy. This page tracks the dollar amount of consumer spending, not the inflation rate. See the Core PCE tracker for the inflation measure.
Healthcare services at roughly 17% of total PCE. Housing services (rent + imputed rent for owner-occupied housing) is second at ~15%. Financial services and food services round out the top 4. The "stuff" categories (durables, nondurables) total about 30% combined.
BEA releases the Personal Income and Outlays report on the last business day of each month at 8:30 AM ET. PCE data covers two months back. Real-time tracking happens via retail sales (earlier indicator) and the GDPNow nowcast.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · PCE and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.