For the second month, Denver residents charged on their Chase credit cards and used their Chase debit cards at a higher growth rate than the rest of nation, according to JPMorgan Chase Institute, which culled anonymized data from records of its 54 million customers.
Restaurants and small businesses saw the biggest gains for Denver consumer spending in September 2016 — with growth rates of 5.01 percent and 7.41 percent from a year ago, respectively. Overall, consumer spending in Denver grew 6.9 percent from the year-ago September.
Nationwide, Chase customers than they did a year ago, which was the third-largest decline since October 2013. Only one-third of the 15 cities studied had positive growth. Those included Atlanta, Seattle, Phoenix and Portland, Ore.
Denver also , with a 5 percent year-over-year spending growth rate.
So, what’s happening in Denver?
People of all ages are spending money, said Marvin Ward, with the JPMorgan Chase Institute.
“Most cities see a negative correlation between age and spending growth, and the same goes for income,” Ward said. “It is unusual to see all groups exhibiting growth, which means baby boomers are growing their spending more in Denver than most of our cities.”
Chase noticed a “remarkable growth” in spending for other services too, including transit, telecom, beauty salons and health providers, plus entertainment options like theaters, golf courses, amusement parks and aquariums.
“The latter services would bolster the tourism argument, but again, itap hard to assign causality here,” he said.
In an , Chase showed what Denver residents were spending money on. Paying for fuel declined 7.86 percent. Restaurants were up 5.01 percent. People spent less in their own neighborhood, a decline of 6.6 percent, compared to spending money in a different region, which was up 38.03 percent.
Consumers younger than 25 saw the fastest growth rate in spending, at 21.39 percent, compared to those age 65 and older, who spent 3.75 percent more than a year earlier.
