Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Accordingly, there’s a lot of interest in consumer behavior, so economists have developed many ways to evaluate the health of consumer spending.
Among them include rigorous surveys that track consumer sentiment and confidence, interest rate tracking particularly around government bonds, indexes that track how prices change over time, and employment data such as job openings and unemployment claims.
Traffic backs up on southbound Interstate 5 heading into downtown San Diego during the afternoon rush hour on April 8, 2025, in San Diego, Calif.
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
The challenge in recent years is that the “tea leaf” reading of economic data has been all over the place. Forecasts have become less reliable—something is missing.
One area that might offer clues is the automotive aftermarket. It’s an underrepresented area of the economy that has an enormous impact on consumers. The automotive aftermarket may well be the biggest market you have never heard of.
Pre-Owned Vehicle Sales Easily Outpace New Vehicle Sales
America is highly dependent on our vehicles. Around 93 percent of Americans who leave the house for work commute in a vehicle, including cars and light trucks, according to U.S. Census data. Overall, Americans own a whopping 291 million vehicles. Those vehicles are how we get to work, bring our kids to their extracurriculars, run errands, attend church, and conduct many of the other daily routines in our lives.
Most of those cars are “used,” and while new car sales data gets the lion’s share of headlines, the pre-owned market is significantly larger. Consider that there are only about 16 million new cars sold in the U.S. every year. By contrast, there are more than twice as many pre-owned cars sold every year.
We acknowledge that used car sales are reflected in some economic metrics, such as the consumer price index (CPI), however, those transactions are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There’s a whole lot more for market watchers to ponder in the aftermarket.
Older Vehicles Tend To Need More Work
The average age of a private vehicle in the U.S. is 12.6 years and growing. Vehicles stay on the road for an average of 19 years. Older vehicles need maintenance and repairs. Collectively, American consumers spent more than $400 billion on light vehicle repairs and maintenance last year.
The aftermarket is likely to grow too in the foreseeable future. Amid rising prices and economic uncertainty, Americans are stretching their budgets and holding onto the vehicles they own for longer periods. It’s reasonable to anticipate that the average age of these vehicles will also grow over time. In turn, that will require additional maintenance and repairs over the vehicle lifetime to keep them running safely and efficiently.
Consumers Are Putting Off Repairs
There are nearly 200,000 auto repair and maintenance shops in the U.S. As with new car sales, such numbers might conjure up an image of your local dealership, however, dealerships account for a small fraction of the available auto service centers. About 80 percent of the post warranty repair capacity in our country stems from independent repair shops.
As co-owners of the Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo (AAPEX), we speak to those shop owners and other industry players regularly through an array of surveys, meetings, and at our trade show. They’ve been telling us for a while now that discretionary spending on vehicles has slowed. Underperformed maintenance has increased, and we have heard anecdotes of consumers trying to cut expenditures by, for example, if they need a brake job, just having the front brakes replaced and postpone the rear brakes for later.
There are operational and safety limits to what repairs can be postponed, which helps make the aftermarket recession resistant. For example, a commuter who is reliant on their vehicle to get to work cannot put off repairs that keep their vehicle running. Similarly, some rules and vehicle inspections—which we need more of on today’s high-tech vehicles—require drivers to perform maintenance that keeps the vehicle safely operating.
A Hidden Ecosystem and Supply Chain
It’s remarkable that we can bring a vehicle to a repair shop, get a diagnosis, and replacement parts, and be safely on our way in a couple of hours. We often take this for granted given there are hundreds of different models of new vehicles, and over those 290 million vehicles, thousands of models to repair—each with tens of thousands of different parts.
That speaks to the fact that the automotive aftermarket is more than just repair shops. The aftermarket is comprised of a complex supply chain of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, parts retailers, and more.
While this is a less visible part of the automotive aftermarket, it’s a significant part of the overall ecosystem and a contributor to the economy. Together with repair shops, the automotive aftermarket employs nearly 4 million people, or about 2 percent of the overall U.S. workforce.
Consumers Depend on the Aftermarket
America’s dependency on aging vehicles means consumers are increasingly dependent on the aftermarket. It fuels economic growth by producing products, services, and jobs. Similarly, it also provides a window into consumer spending through its profound influence on the pocketbook. To that end, a better understanding of where the American consumer is headed may lie in the automotive aftermarket.
Paul McCarthy is the president of MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers. MEMA co-produces AAPEX, one of the fastest-growing conferences in the world, with its partner the Auto Care Association.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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