The American consumer has spent years absorbing shocks that economists expected to break spending.
Covid pandemic disruptions, the fastest inflation in four decades, aggressive interest rate hikes, and the Iran war energy price surge in April 2026 all tested household finances, and spending held up each time
The conventional explanation has been pandemic savings, a strong labor market, and wage growth that has kept pace with rising prices. JPMorgan’s Consumer and Community Banking CEO Marianne Lake appeared at the Morgan Stanley U.S. Financials Conference in New York on June 9, emphasizing that those explanations are starting to expire.
JPMorgan flags sluggish wage growth for some Lake opened with a constructive baseline before delivering the economic warning. “As we sit here today, the consumer is resilient, the metrics are good, everything looks fine,” she said, according to More Oil and Gas: “But there are an increasing, small but nevertheless increasing, number of people for whom wage inflation is not currently keeping pace with inflation, and that will likely be the thing to watch,” she added. She sharpened the concern when asked about the forward outlook. “You’re not seeing anything right now, but you are being very, very watchful,” Lake said. “If inflation were to be higher for longer, this sort of trend of wages keeping up with inflation could be at some risk,” PYMNTS reported. What’s happening with tax refunds, energy costs, lower-income households The most specific data point in Lake’s remarks concerned how lower-income JPMorgan customers have been managing the April energy price spike.