Americans are tapped out and interest rates are high. The only surprise is that the pullback took so long.

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Americans are doing less DIY. It’s another worrying sign for the economy.

A week after Home Depot described American consumers as having a “deferral mindset” about spending, Lowe’s is humming the same tune, saying American homeowners — and by extension the economy — are in a strange spot this summer.

Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison said on Tuesday that the home-improvement retailer’s DIY customers were “on the sidelines waiting for some form of an inflection to take place.”

Ellison was speaking on the company’s quarterly earnings call, during which Lowe’s lowered its earnings expectations for the rest of the year because of a slowdown in sales for big-ticket discretionary projects.

Large projects represent about three-quarters of DIY sales for Lowe’s, Ellison said, “so any pullback in these big-ticket discretionary categories is really more of a disproportionate impact to us.”

 

h/t Stephen Green

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