consumer trading – Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says internal card data shows consumers trading down—yet still spending on vacations, dining out, and other life staples—while admitting Americans sound pessimistic even as they keep paying.
The pet food aisle can look like nothing more than routine shopping—until Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan watches it the way a banker watches interest rates.
In a recent interview with NBC News at the bank’s New York Financial Center. Moynihan described what his team sees when customers swipe their credit and debit cards. Higher end pet food, he said, isn’t being charged as much on those cards as the next brand down. The implication is hard to miss: people are making room for the pressures coming from elsewhere.
“What you’re seeing is people are shifting, so people shift around and make room for the higher gas prices,” Moynihan said. “That’s the reality of the day-to-day consumer.”
He pointed to Bank of America’s scale—almost 70 million customers—as the reason the pattern is visible in real time. With inflation outpacing wage growth in May for the second month in a row. Moynihan said consumers were paying around 40% more at the pump than they were before the U.S. launched a war against Iran. In that environment, the pet food aisle becomes a mirror of household decision-making under pressure.
And still, he argued, the story isn’t only about cutting back. Monthly spending on the bank’s credit and debit cards was up 5% overall in May compared with the prior year. he said. The data. Moynihan added. shows that spending reaches beyond the basics—people continue to spend on vacations and “things like that. ” and they still go out to eat.
“It’s good for America. They still go out to eat, which is also good. Those are job-creating activities,” Moynihan said.
That’s where the emotional tension lives: Americans, he said, are increasingly pessimistic—yet their spending keeps moving.
Moynihan acknowledged a “vibes problem” in the U.S. economy. In surveys and interviews, he said, Americans overwhelmingly say they are pessimistic about both their own finances and the economy overall, even as the payment behavior his bank tracks continues.
“We watch what they do, not what they say,” Moynihan said. “They’re spending money and doing things.”
“What they’re saying is they’re very upset and they’re worried about high prices, affordability. We have to watch that, because if it goes from ‘what they say versus what they do’ to what they’re doing, that’s a real problem for the U.S. economy,” he added.
The question of balancing today’s bills against tomorrow’s plans isn’t abstract for Moynihan. Growing up, he said, his family had eight kids. His father, described by Moynihan as middle class, managed to send all eight to college. Moynihan said student loans were part of it. and he remembers his dad bridging the gap between what they could pay and what school costs required.
“It was a simple thing: You took all the money you earned, and you put it on a table. And you borrowed all you could, and then basically pushed that on the table. And he would pay the difference, and he had to borrow to do it,” Moynihan said.
That’s the same tightrope many families face now, he said—an issue that affects not only whether people can get through the month, but how much they can invest in their children and grandchildren.
“That’s the question, invest in the future but also make sure that you’re always trying to figure out how you can make a balance in the household,” Moynihan said.
He framed it as more than a household problem, too. “To the societal question, we’ve got to make sure all Americans earn a great standard of living, better than anybody in the world,” he said.
For Bank of America, Moynihan said, the effort includes staying active in the jobs market even as technology changes quickly.
He told business leaders to keep hiring. “Our job. a corporation’s job. is to hire people. pay them well. train them well. get them ready for this brave new thing called AI. ” Moynihan said. He argued that corporate responsibility now includes reskilling and retraining rather than planning on a future where AI simply replaces entry-level workers.
“Apply AI, because you need to do that for the shareholder, and make sure you’re making money. But do it in a way that you’re making sure that you’re reskilling your people, retraining your people,” he said.
The company’s staffing promises are part of that message. Moynihan said Bank of America recently hired 2,000 recent college graduates and another 2,000 summer interns. He also said the bank pledged to hire 10,000 veterans and 8,000 community college recruits over the next five years.
He connected the idea to his own early career by recalling how he used to roll quarters together to pay his rent.
With a headcount of roughly 210,000, Moynihan said the bank needs to hire between 1,300 and 1,500 people a month to keep up with job movers and retirements. He said the bank plans headcount carefully and uses attrition to redeploy and retrain workers.
“Affordability is very tough on people, but we have to do our part to make sure our teammates can live well,” Moynihan said.
Last year, Bank of America raised its minimum wage to $25 an hour, increasing the annual starting salary to more than $50,000.
For Moynihan, the pet food aisle and the corporate hiring pledge sit under the same reality: people are adjusting their purchases in the face of higher costs, and if spending behavior turns—between what people say and what they do—the consequences for the broader economy could be immediate.
Right now, his point is that the country’s spending still runs ahead of its fear. But the shift he described, visible in everyday choices, is exactly why he believes everyone has to pay attention.
Bank of America Brian Moynihan inflation consumer spending gas prices pet food aisle trading down credit and debit cards vacancies AI hiring minimum wage