Now that we have several years of insight on the COVID pandemic, there is an interesting take emerging on how it impacted our spending habits and how that is affecting the broader economy.
Now, this research, conducted by CIBC Capital Markets in this country, looks at American spending habits but probably isn’t too much different in this country but it may explain some of the stronger-than-expected consumer spending.
It turns out the work-from-home phenomena triggered a new wave of consumer expenditure for things such as computers and office supplies as employees moved home. What’s interesting is that a good deal of that spending may actually have been paid for by employers or businesses and more likely should have been called investment rather than consumer spending.
Nonetheless, the thought that we were going to become more interested in spending on services or experiences rather than goods didn’t really materialize. In fact, it went the other way and was fairly consistent as these workers were regularly updating computers or software and supplies, extending the goods buying cycle through COVID and beyond.
