Millennials Gain Share of Consumer Spending
April 12,
2019 by Laurie Northington in General 
As Baby Boomers continue to age out of prime furniture buying years, Generation X households have held strong in their power as key contributors to consumer spending – despite a much smaller population size. A more affluent Generation X population paired with the sheer size of Millennials, now fully in adulthood, points to a bright future for the furniture and home furnishings industry. In 2017, Millennials accounted for 71.9 million people and are expected to surpass Baby Boomers size of 73.5 million next year.
This is the first factoid in a series of four factoids, using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2017 Consumer Expenditure Survey to show the shift over the last four years in consumer spending among the five adult generations as Millennials continue to gain a greater share.
In 2017, Baby Boomers still had the highest number of households representing 34.4 percent of consumer units, compared to 26.8 percent for Generation X, and 25.1 percent for Millennials. Although Millennials are inching closer to Generation X in consumer units, the percent of all consumer spending is still over 10 percentage points higher for Gen Xers and almost 15 points higher for Baby Boomers. After years of Baby Boomers controlling the majority of furniture and bedding spending, the market has now spread to Generation X and Millennials, who combined account for 56.9 percent.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey 2017, Pew Research
(1)Demographers are still debating the last birth year of Millennials, Pew Research has recently set the year at 1996. The Census Bureau has not yet gone on record for the Millennial end year.
(2) Post Millennials will likely be split into two generations at some point