How Much Do Americans Spend on Easter? (2013–2023)
In 2022, Easter was ranked as the seventh-biggest shopping event of the year in terms of total expenditure. This puts it ahead of other key spending events like Halloween and the Super Bowl.
This makes it an extremely lucrative opportunity for retailers, and understanding key numbers surrounding how much money is spent on Easter can help businesses craft effective sales and marketing strategies.
So how much money do Americans spend on Easter every year, and how much did they spend this year?
Easter spending: 2013–2022
Much like Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day spending trends over the past decade, annual Easter spending in the United States has generally increased. Recent data from the National Retail Federation shows that from 2013 to 2022, consumers’ total expenditure to celebrate the Easter holidays rose by 20.9% overall. This increased at an average annual growth rate of 2.4%.
However, growth during this period was not smooth, with more annual decreases than increases. In 2013, overall Easter spending was $17.2 billion. This fell by 7.6% the following year, to $15.9 billion, before three consecutive years of annual growth propelled it to $18.4 billion in 2017, a then-record high.
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The two years that followed saw Easter spending fall by 1.1% and 0.5%, to $18.2 billion and $18.1 billion, respectively. In 2020, the amount of money consumers spent to mark Easter surged by 19.9%, the biggest-ever annual growth recorded so far, to a record $21.7 billion. In 2021 and 2022, expenditure fell, by 0.5% and 3.7%, to $21.6 billion and $20.8 billion, respectively.
How much money did Americans spend on Easter this year?
According to the data, Americans spent $24 billion on Easter festivities this year. This represented a 15.4% increase over 2022’s numbers, and an all-time high.
The numbers also show that the average Easter spending per household grew by 13.1%, from $169.79 in 2022 to $192.01. Likewise, the percentage of people celebrating Easter this year inched upward by one percentage point—from 80% in 2022 to 81%.
Easter spending 2023: top expenses
Here were consumers’ largest expenses for Easter in 2023:
- Food: $7.3 billion
- Clothing: $4 billion
- Gifts: $3.8 billion
- Candy: $3.3 billion
- Flowers: $1.8 billion