Name: Survery: 57% of Americans have some debt going into holiday season
Uploaded: 2025-12-15T16:29:05.873Z
Duration: 3 min 28 s
Description: CNBC’s Steve Liesman joins Squawk Box to break down the latest results of the CNBC All-America Economic Survey.

CNBC’s Steve Liesman joins Squawk Box to break down the latest results of the CNBC All-America Economic Survey.

A recent All-American Economic Survey, presented by CNBC, indicates that 57% of Americans are entering the holiday season with at least some debt, an increase of 11 percentage points from the previous year. The survey also found that 61% of respondents feel their income is lagging behind the cost of living, and 68% report higher gift prices, leading many to seek bargains and shift their shopping habits.

Online shopping and visits to big-box and wholesale stores have increased, especially among lower-income groups and women. Despite higher debt levels, most consumers' financial situations remain stable, with no significant rise in debt payment issues or unemployment, though inflation continues to influence both spending behavior and psychological outlook.

Survery: 57% of Americans have some debt going into holiday season

Our senior economics reporter, Steve Leesman, is here at Post 9 with the numbers. And, Steve, this question about how inflation is affecting holiday spending. We're calling it inflation the red-nosed reindeer, how it's really leading spending. It's factoring heavily into consumers' views on spending this holiday season. The All-American Economic Survey finding it's affecting where people choose to shop and, of course, how much. Of the thousands of people surveyed across the nation, here are some of the results. You can see there's 61 percent say their income is lagging the cost of living, 68 percent say gift prices are higher this year, including, by the way, people who have been out shopping already, and 46 percent say they're spending less because of the high cost of goods. That's up 10 points from last year. The result, Americans shopping for bargains and looking in different places. We found a nine-percentage-point increase in Americans shopping online and a three-point gain among those saying they plan to do most of their holiday shopping at big-box stores like Walmart and Best Buy, six-point gain for wholesale retail outlets. Now, compared to 2024, the move to online shopping was strongest, interestingly, among those with incomes below $30K. Rich people have always been shopping online, but that's interesting. Women of all ages going online and those spending a fair amount and those spending the least also going online. The wealthy, meanwhile, have increased their spending, guess where, big-box warehouse stores like Costco and BJ's, gold chains and bracelets and wandering the Costco aisles. Those spending more than $1,000 on holiday gifts are up nine points from last year. Those making more than $75K, up seven points from last year. Now, 28 percent of the public say they only buy discounted items, while half look for items that are discounted, but they say, you know what, we're going to buy it anyway. Ten percent, they don't care about prices whatsoever. This is most interesting here. Fifty-seven percent of Americans say they have at least some debt going into the holiday season, up 11 points from last year, a five-point increase among those who say they have a lot of debt. Interestingly, in this age group, the biggest change, 18 to 34-year-olds, that could reflect a change in their student loan debt. So you might have, last year I didn't have to pay it, I didn't count it, I didn't think of it as debt, this year I'm paying it, I don't have to think of it as debt, it could be weighing on that younger cohort. Any questions on buy now, pay later? No, we didn't have one this year. We had one last year and it was sort of out there, it wasn't that big of a deal last year. We did have an AI question that I'm going to talk about at two o'clock and it's, you know these surveys that are out there that say 80% of the public are using AI for gifts? Very small. We have a very small percentage of people using AI and they're mostly using it, it appears, to get the best price, they're not asking the advice of AI for, what should I buy for curl? You mean like true agentic commerce? Right, exactly. Right, right. We're not there yet. I feel like that's just starting to roll out. Steve, wrap it all up and how do you characterize how the consumer's doing? We were just having this debate with Mark Zandi about, is the consumer really resilient? So the consumer, the balance sheet is in good shape. We don't have a big issue when it comes to their not paying their debt, the debt levels may be high. Still we had a tick up in unemployment, but not a big surge in unemployment, wage gains have been okay. I think there's two elements to the prices. One is a psychological one, they're reading a lot about it, but I also think they're going to the stores and seeing perhaps some of those tariffs out there and saying, you know what, I'm going to wait. There's still days to go. So there's this back and forth with the retailer and the consumer over the buy it or not or wait, and they'll see if we get more discounts by the end of the year.

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Breakdown