Webinar

State of the US consumer in 2026

18 September 2025 – 11.00am EST (New York)

online

The US consumer is a big source of uncertainty for 2026 corporate plans. Will inflation undermine purchasing power, driving significant trading down? Will higher-income consumers remain resilient and willing to spend, or is there a pullback ahead? How will tariffs, price increases, and tax cuts affect different consumer groups heading into 2026? In this interactive event, we’ll share our latest outlook for the US consumer next year at the both national and subnational level and provide planning inputs for firms looking to set assumptions and build scenarios for next year.

In this event we will be covering:

Strength of the US consumer in 2025.

High vs low-income consumer outlook.

Consumer spending outlook at the state and metro level.

Key risks to the consumer outlook.

Key strategy insights for B2C corporates from our outlook.

This webinar is being held on our new platform, ON24. If you do not receive your confirmation email, please check your junk and spam folders.

Speakers

Alex Mackle

Alex Mackle is a Corporate Advisory Engagement Lead in the US Macro Consulting team based in New York. Alex focuses on scenarios and stress testing, as well as CECL/IFRS9 scenarios. He also frequently gives training sessions on the Global Economic Model, focusing on scenarios and stress testing capabilities.

Prior to joining the US Macro Consulting team in 2017, Alex worked in the Scenarios team in London, contributing to the Global Scenario Service and various stress testing exercises. He has also worked on several modelling projects, including a macro model for the Central Bank of Oman.

Corporate Advisory Engagement Lead

Barbara Byrne Denham

As a senior economist at Oxford Economics, Barbara brings a seasoned approach to the study of US cities. She works in Oxford Economics’ division of Cities and Regions analysis where she leads in writing reports on US metros. Prior to joining Oxford Economics, she worked six years for Moody’s Analytics REIS where she did similar work and wrote a number of white papers covering metro-level analyses including the Impact of the Tax and Jobs Act on Commercial Real Estate; Amazon HQ2, a Scoring Analysis; and the Economics of College Towns. Barbara’s work is frequently cited by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Crains New York Business and numerous other publications.

Prior to working at Moody’s, Barbara worked more than 20 years at various commercial real estate firms including Jones Lang LaSalle and Eastern Consolidated where she focused on writing market reports and white papers.

Barbara holds a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of Notre Dame and is a Ph. D. candidate in Economics from New York University.

Senior Economist, Cities & Regions

Michael Pearce

Michael Pearce is the Deputy Chief US Economist based in New York City, sharing responsibility for forecasting the US economy and monetary policy. He has a particular focus on the US consumer and inflation. Before joining Oxford Economics, Michael worked for the Treasury in the UK, and was a senior member of the US economics team at Capital Economics for more than a decade, and he lived and worked in the UK, US, and Switzerland during that time. He has a masters degree in economic history from the London School of Economics, and a bachelors degree in economics from University College London.

Deputy Chief US Economist