# Consumer Expenditure Survey The **Consumer Expenditure Survey** is the [[Bureau of Labor Statistics]]' annual accounting of what American households actually spend, broken out by category, income band, and demographic group. It answers a different question from the inflation indicators it is often confused with. The [[Consumer Price Index]] measures how much prices moved; [[Personal Consumption Expenditures]] measures aggregate consumption and its price deflator. This survey measures **where the money went** — what share of a household budget each category took. That makes it the source for the statistic people reach for when they want to describe a squeeze rather than a rate: the fraction of a paycheck consumed by rent and groceries before anything else happens. ## The 2025 figures, released October 29, 2026 | Measure | 2025 | |---|---| | Average annual spending per household | **$81,905** (up 4.3% from $78,527) | | Average income before taxes | **$110,847** (up 6.4%) | | Housing share of spending | **33.9%** | | Food share of spending | **13.0%** | | **Housing + food, combined** | **46.9%** — the largest combined share in about 15 years | | Housing spending | $27,790, up **5.8%** | | Food spending | $10,633, up **4.6%** | Housing and food were the only major categories with statistically significant increases, and together they cost households about **$1,988 more** than in 2024. Housing's share is the highest since 2010 outside the 2020 pandemic distortion; food's is the highest since 2011. Within food, meat, poultry, fish and eggs rose **11.7%** to $1,579. Transportation spending grew just **1.3%**. ## The lag is the whole problem The survey's political usefulness and its analytical weakness come from the same feature: **it reports a completed calendar year.** The October 2026 release describes **2025**. That gap matters because the release landed in the closing week of the [[2026 Midterm Elections]], into an argument about [[Affordability]] and the price effects of the [[Iran War 2026]]. The war began in **February 2026**. Whatever it did to fuel, freight and grocery prices is therefore **not in these numbers at all** — the squeeze they document is a 2025 squeeze, built before the war started. Both directions of misuse follow from ignoring that: - Citing the 46.9% figure as evidence of *current* war-driven costs attributes 2025 data to 2026 events. - Citing the same release's income growth — pretax income up 6.4%, faster than the 4.3% rise in spending — as evidence that households are *fine now* has the identical defect. > [!note] Reading it correctly > Use this survey for **composition**: what share of a budget a category commands, and how that share has drifted over years. Use [[Consumer Price Index]] or [[Gas Prices]] for **what is happening this month**. A claim about present-tense household pain needs a present-tense series. ## See Also - [[Consumer Price Index]] — prices, monthly - [[Personal Consumption Expenditures]] — the Fed's preferred inflation gauge - [[Housing Affordability]] · [[Real Wages]] · [[Misery Index]] - [[Affordability]] — the midterm issue these figures get cited in - [[Gas Prices]] — the current-month series - [[Bureau of Labor Statistics]] — the publisher - [[Economic Indicators Hub]]