Gen Z slashes holiday budgets ahead of shopping season

Boomers are the only generation planning to increase their holiday shopping budgets this year, according to PwC's 2025 Holiday Outlook.

’Tis the season for tighter budgets.

Holiday spending in the U.S. is expected to fall 5% this year, driven largely by Gen Z’s sharp 23% pullback, according to a survey from a leading consulting and accounting firm.

Households plan to be more deliberate in their spending over the holidays, prioritizing value and deciding what to splurge on and where to scale back, says PwC’s 2025 Holiday Outlook, which was released Wednesday.

The decline in planned spending underscores how economic uncertainty is affecting consumer sentiment heading into the most important retail season of the year.

Gen Z’s outlook this year is a stark reversal from 2024, when their projected holiday budgets surged 37%. (Their actual holiday spending rose a more modest 6%, according to PwC’s analysis of credit and debit card panel data.) PwC’s new survey found that 25% of Gen Z say their financial situation is worse than it was last year, compared with 17% who said the same in 2024.