Wellness Is the Only Category Consumers Are Spending More On in 2026 — Here's the Catch

Key Takeaways

• Among ten consumer spending categories tracked by CivicScience heading into 2026, health and wellness was the only one where consumers planned to increase spending — by 13% on average — while every other category, including travel, clothing, beauty, and real estate, was expected to decline.
• That resilience is happening at the same time a third of Americans say they're struggling to afford basic healthcare, and 15% report having borrowed money to pay medical bills, according to Gallup data — meaning wellness spending and healthcare-affordability strain are rising together, not trading off against each other.
• Globally, 55% of consumers say they're willing to spend over $100 a month on nutrition, self-care, and physical and mental health, according to NIQ's Global State of Health & Wellness research.
• A March 2026 Edelman survey found consumers worldwide now say AI tools and social media health influencers have more influence over their diet, supplement, and wellness decisions than physicians do — a genuine shift in who consumers trust for health guidance.
• The GLP-1 medication category is reshaping spending patterns beyond healthcare itself: NIQ data shows GLP-1 users made 6.4% fewer shopping trips year-over-year, but spent 15.1% more per trip and 7.7% more overall than non-users, redirecting spending into different product categories rather than simply reducing it.

The number that stands out: wellness is the one category still growing

A CivicScience survey of nearly 1,900 respondents heading into 2026 asked consumers about planned spending across ten major categories. Health and wellness was the only category where respondents planned to spend more — 13% more, on average, than in 2025. Every other tracked category was headed the opposite direction: home improvement and furnishings was the next-best performer, but still forecast to decline 3%; travel was down 4%; clothing down 11%; beauty down 15%; and real estate — the weakest category — down 19%, which researchers linked to persistently low housing inventory.

That's a genuinely unusual pattern for a consumer-spending environment researchers otherwise describe as cautious and selective. Separate 2026 consumer research describes the broader mood as one of "disciplined frugality" — shoppers hunting harder for deals and cutting back across most discretionary categories — which makes wellness spending's isolated growth more notable, not less. When nearly every other category of consumer spending is contracting, a category expanding by double digits is a genuine outlier worth understanding, not just another item on a wellness trend list.

The uncomfortable context: this is happening alongside a healthcare affordability crisis

The wellness-spending growth story doesn't exist in isolation from a harder economic reality. Gallup data cited in the same reporting found 45% of US consumers struggle to afford healthcare — described as the fastest-growing health concern NIQ tracks — with 15% of Americans reporting they've borrowed money specifically to pay medical bills. The financial strain extends into broader life decisions: 29% of consumers reported canceling a vacation, 14% stopped shopping for a home, 9% delayed retirement, and 6% postponed having children specifically because of healthcare cost pressure. Consumers making the most financial tradeoffs to manage healthcare costs also reported the worst overall health outcomes — a pattern that suggests genuine hardship, not simply cautious budgeting.

That creates a real, and easy to miss, distinction: rising wellness spending isn't a sign that healthcare affordability has improved. It's occurring in parallel with — and to some degree, likely because of — growing distrust in and financial strain around the traditional healthcare system. Consumers increasingly appear to be redirecting spending toward proactive, self-directed wellness products and services precisely because reactive, traditional healthcare has become harder to afford and access.

Who's driving the growth, and what they trust instead of a doctor

Generational data sharpens the picture further. NIQ's wellness research found nearly 30% of Gen Z and millennial consumers in the US say they prioritize wellness "a lot more" than they did a year earlier, compared with up to 23% among older generations — younger consumers are disproportionately driving the category's growth. Globally, 55% of consumers say they're willing to spend more than $100 a month on nutrition, self-care, and physical and mental health, according to NIQ's broader wellness research.

A specific and consequential shift shows up in a March 2026 Edelman survey: consumers worldwide reported that AI tools and social media health influencers now hold more sway over their diet, supplement, and wellness decisions than physicians do. That's a meaningful change in the information architecture behind wellness spending — decisions that once ran primarily through a doctor's office are increasingly shaped by algorithmic recommendation and creator-driven content instead. It also helps explain a related finding from the same body of research: 62% of consumers globally say they're more skeptical of health claims made by food and wellness companies, and 82% want clearer, more transparent product labeling — trust in the message has grown more contested even as trust in traditional physician guidance has weakened.

The specific way GLP-1 medications are reshaping spending patterns

One of the more concrete, measurable shifts within wellness spending involves GLP-1 weight-loss and diabetes medications. NIQ's retail-panel data, covering the 52 weeks ending August 2, 2025, found GLP-1 users made 6.4% fewer shopping trips year-over-year — the pattern retailers initially worried about, expecting shrinking basket sizes as appetite and consumption patterns changed. But the fuller picture that emerged was more nuanced: GLP-1 users spent 15.1% more per trip than non-users during the same period, and 7.7% more overall across the full year. Retail researchers describe this as a redirection of spending into different product categories, not an overall reduction in spending — GLP-1 users are buying less food overall but appear to be reallocating that spending elsewhere, including into wellness-adjacent categories. Separate retail research from Circana found GLP-1 adoption extending into apparel purchasing as well, describing it as a structural shift in the category as consumers rebuild wardrobes around changing body composition — a dynamic retail researchers explicitly distinguish from a passing trend.

What this means if you're building or investing in a consumer-facing business

• Treat "wellness" as a genuine spending priority category for planning purposes, not a soft, discretionary add-on. With wellness the only category showing growth against a broader backdrop of consumer pullback across nine other tracked categories, businesses positioned adjacent to wellness — even outside the traditional health and beauty sector — have a real opportunity that pure discretionary categories currently don't.
• Don't assume wellness spending growth signals improving healthcare access or affordability. The same consumer base driving wellness spending growth is simultaneously reporting significant healthcare affordability strain — a business built on the assumption that wellness spending reflects broad economic comfort is working from a mistaken premise.
• Recognize that influencer and AI-driven recommendation now compete directly with clinical authority in consumer health decisions. A wellness or health-adjacent brand's marketing strategy increasingly needs to account for AI tools and social media influencers as primary decision-drivers, alongside — not instead of — traditional credibility signals like clinical backing and physician endorsement, particularly given consumers' simultaneously rising skepticism of unsubstantiated health claims.
• If your category intersects with GLP-1 adoption (apparel, food and beverage, fitness, beauty), model the spending-redirection pattern specifically, not just a demand decline. The retail data shows GLP-1 users spending more per trip and more overall, not simply buying less — a business assuming pure demand destruction from GLP-1 adoption may be missing a genuine reallocation opportunity within its own category.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is wellness spending growth concentrated among higher-income consumers? Available data suggests broad participation rather than concentration purely at the high end — NIQ's research found 55% of consumers globally willing to spend over $100 a month on wellness, and generational data shows the growth disproportionately driven by Gen Z and millennial consumers rather than being purely an affluent-consumer phenomenon. That said, other wellness-specific research on luxury consumers separately shows strong growth intent within that segment as well.

Does "wellness spending" mostly mean fitness and gym memberships, or something broader? Current research describes a broad category spanning healthy groceries and nutrition, mental health support, beauty and longevity products, supplements, wearable health technology, and fitness — with healthy groceries and nutrition consistently ranking as the single largest area of planned spending increase across recent surveys.

Why are consumers trusting AI tools and influencers over physicians for health decisions? The available survey data documents that the shift is occurring but doesn't fully explain the underlying cause. Plausible contributing factors suggested by related research include healthcare access and affordability barriers making physician consultation less available for routine wellness questions, alongside the sheer volume and accessibility of AI-generated and influencer health content compared with a scheduled doctor's appointment.

Is the wellness spending increase likely to continue, or is it a short-term 2026 pattern? Longer-range market forecasts point toward continued growth — the Global Wellness Institute projects the overall wellness economy growing at roughly 7.6% annually from 2024 to 2029, outpacing global GDP growth, while separate market-sizing research forecasts the broader global health and wellness market roughly doubling by the mid-2030s. These are directional forecasts rather than guarantees, but they're consistent with the current spending-intent data rather than describing it as an isolated, one-year anomaly.

Sources & References

• Fitt Insider, "Wellness Spending Rises as Healthcare Costs Climb" (CivicScience and Gallup data)
• SupplySide SJ, "Health-and-wellness spending defies belt-tightening trend"
• NielsenIQ (NIQ), "Health and Wellness Consumer Trends 2026" and "Global State of Health & Wellness 2025"
• eMarketer, "The Health and Wellness Market 2026" (Edelman survey data)
• Circana, "Health & Wellness Market Trends: Consumer Behavior & Spending Data"
• Global Wellness Institute / Global Wellness Summit, "The Future of Wellness: 2026 Trends"

Related Reading

For a look at how rising costs are playing out on the employer side of the healthcare system at the same time consumer wellness spending is growing, see PrimeWorldMedia's coverage of small-business health insurance premiums jumping 14% for 2027 — together, the two stories describe a healthcare and wellness landscape where costs are rising on nearly every front simultaneously.