Consumer Research Statistics: Spending, Payments, and Holiday Shopping

Consumer research statistics at a glance

Consumer research statistics are useful because they show how people actually spend, pay, and shop, not just what they say they prefer. The latest figures in the source dataset show a household economy shaped by housing, transportation, food, and payment behavior, with clear differences across income groups and channels.

Here is the quickest read on the data:

• Average annual expenditures for all consumer units were $78,535 in 2024, up from $77,158 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Average income before taxes was $104,207 in 2024, up from $101,805 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Housing was the largest category at 33.4 percent of total annual expenditures in 2024 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Transportation took 17.0 percent, food took 12.9 percent, and personal insurance and pensions took 12.5 percent of total annual expenditures in 2024 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• In the Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, consumers made 48 payments per month on average in October 2023, up 6 percent from October 2022 (Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice).
• In the NRF Thanksgiving weekend survey, 197 million consumers shopped over the five-day holiday period in 2024 (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).

Table of contents

• What the numbers say about consumer spending
• How households allocate money across major categories
• What changes by income quintile
• What payment behavior reveals about consumer research
• What holiday shopping data adds
• How to use these statistics in research work

What the numbers say about consumer spending

The strongest signal in the dataset is simple: consumer budgets are large, stable, and spread across a few dominant necessities. The average annual expenditure figure of $78,535 in 2024 gives a useful baseline for consumer research because it reflects real household outlays rather than stated intentions (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).

That amount rose from $77,158 in 2023, while average income before taxes rose from $101,805 to $104,207 over the same period (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024). The relationship between income and spending matters for research because it suggests households had room to absorb somewhat higher spending in 2024, even though the increase in expenditures was modest compared with income.

The number of consumer units also grew, reaching 135,760 thousand in 2024, up from 134,556 thousand in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024). For anyone studying consumer research statistics, that matters because it changes the scale of the market behind the averages.

Fast facts worth remembering

• Total food spending was $10,169 in 2024, up from $9,985 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Housing spending was $26,266 in 2024, up from $25,436 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Transportation spending was $13,318 in 2024, up from $13,174 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Healthcare spending was $6,197 in 2024, up from $6,159 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Personal insurance and pensions spending was $9,797 in 2024, up from $9,556 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).

How households allocate money across major categories

The category shares give a clearer research picture than the total alone. Housing accounted for 33.4 percent of total annual expenditures in 2024, more than any other category (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024). Transportation followed at 17.0 percent, food at 12.9 percent, and personal insurance and pensions at 12.5 percent (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).

That distribution tells you where consumer attention is structurally anchored. Housing and transportation together consumed half of the expenditure mix, which means consumer research often begins with fixed or semi-fixed obligations before it gets to discretionary behavior.

A compact comparison helps show the balance of the budget:

Category	2024 share of total expenditures	2024 spending	2023 spending
Housing	33.4%	$26,266	$25,436
Transportation	17.0%	$13,318	$13,174
Food	12.9%	$10,169	$9,985
Personal insurance and pensions	12.5%	$9,797	$9,556
Healthcare	7.9%	$6,197	$6,159
Entertainment	4.6%	$3,609	$3,635
Cash contributions	2.9%	$2,292	$2,378
Apparel and services	2.5%	$2,001	$2,041
Education	2.0%	$1,569	$1,535

Several points stand out.

Housing was far ahead of every other category, which reinforces how much consumer research should focus on shelter costs when analyzing budget pressure or spending tradeoffs (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).

Transportation remained the second-largest category, and within that category the mix shifted in useful ways. Vehicle purchases net outlay was $5,337 in 2024, down from $5,539 in 2023, while other vehicle expenses were $4,206 in 2024, up from $3,845 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024). Vehicle insurance spending also rose to $1,993 from $1,775 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024). For research, that combination suggests households may have been reallocating transport dollars rather than simply cutting transportation overall.

Food spending was also broad. Food at home reached $6,224 in 2024, up from $6,053 in 2023, while food away from home reached $3,945 in 2024, up from $3,933 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024). The in-home and away-from-home split is valuable because it reveals how consumers distribute food spending between price-sensitive and convenience-driven channels.

Within food at home, the category mix provides a more detailed view:

• Cereals and bakery products were $779 in 2024 versus $830 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Meats, poultry, fish, and eggs were $1,414 in 2024 versus $1,164 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Dairy products were $631 in 2024 versus $602 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Fruits and vegetables were $953 in 2024 versus $988 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).
• Other food at home was $2,447 in 2024 versus $2,469 in 2023 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).

That pattern matters because it shows that consumer research cannot treat “food” as one monolithic category. Different subcategories move differently, and the CSV makes those differences visible.

What changes by income quintile

Income segmentation is one of the cleanest ways to interpret consumer research statistics. The source dataset shows a wide gap between the lowest and highest income quintiles.

In 2024, the lowest income quintile spent $35,046 on average, while the highest income quintile spent $150,342 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024). The second quintile spent $50,054, the third spent $66,900, and the fourth spent $89,972 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).

Here is the comparison in one table:

Income quintile	Average spending in 2024
Lowest	$35,046
Second	$50,054
Third	$66,900
Fourth	$89,972
Highest	$150,342

The spread is large enough to change how you should interpret every other consumer research metric in the dataset. A single national average can hide radically different household realities.

Two implications follow from that spread.

First, research on affordability should not stop at averages. The lowest quintile’s average spending is less than one quarter of the highest quintile’s spending, which means the same price change may hit different groups with very different force (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024).

Second, category research should be paired with income segmentation whenever possible. A category like housing or transportation may dominate budgets across the board, but the burden, elasticity, and likely response can vary substantially by income group.

The source also notes that the 2024 CE tables cover 17 demographic characteristics and that public-use microdata are available for 1980 through 2024 (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024). That is a useful research detail because it signals both breadth and time depth. If you are building a consumer trend analysis, the data structure itself supports more than one angle: demographics, time series, and category composition.

What payment behavior reveals about consumer research

Consumer research is not limited to spending totals. Payment behavior shows how households choose to transact.

In the Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, consumers made 48 payments per month on average in October 2023, up 6 percent from October 2022 (Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice). Average monthly payment value per consumer was $6,867, up from $5,382, a 28 percent increase (Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice). Average payment value was $142, up 21 percent from 2023 (Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice).

Those three numbers together tell a useful story: people were making more payments, with higher total monthly value, and higher average payment size. That makes payment data useful as a complement to expenditure data, because it shows transaction cadence rather than only annual category totals.

The mix of payment methods also shifted in ways that matter for consumer research.

• Cash use in the prior 30 days fell from 87 percent of consumers in 2023 to 83 percent in 2024 (Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice).
• Check use in the prior 30 days fell from 40 percent to 35 percent (Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice).
• In October 2024, 83 percent of US consumers 18 and older used cash in the prior 30 days (Atlanta Fed More US Consumers Use Cash than Any Other Way to Pay).
• In October 2024, 35 percent used a paper check in the prior 30 days (Atlanta Fed More US Consumers Use Cash than Any Other Way to Pay).

The dataset also shows strong growth in mobile and digital payment behavior:

• In October 2023, 70 percent of US consumers made a mobile payment at least once in the prior 12 months (Atlanta Fed The Mobile Pay Juggernaut Rolls On).
• In October 2023, 29 percent of payments made by US consumers used a mobile device, up from 8 percent in 2018 (Atlanta Fed The Mobile Pay Juggernaut Rolls On).
• In-person payments made via mobile were 10 percent in October 2023 (Atlanta Fed The Mobile Pay Juggernaut Rolls On).
• Remote purchases accounted for 22 percent of all purchases in October 2023, and 85 percent of remote purchases were completed via mobile (Atlanta Fed The Mobile Pay Juggernaut Rolls On).
• In 2023, 72 percent of consumers adopted online or mobile payment accounts like PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, and Cash App (Atlanta Fed The Mobile Pay Juggernaut Rolls On).
• In 2023, 73 percent of consumers used mobile banking (Atlanta Fed The Mobile Pay Juggernaut Rolls On).
• In 2023, 45 percent of payments to another person were made via a mobile device, and 27 percent of bills were paid using a mobile device (Atlanta Fed The Mobile Pay Juggernaut Rolls On).

For consumer research, these figures point to a broad shift in how transactions are initiated and completed. A household can still use cash often, yet also rely heavily on mobile tools for remote purchases, peer-to-peer transfers, and bill payment. That layered behavior is exactly why payment data belongs in consumer research analysis.

Credit card ownership and usage add one more layer.

In October 2023, 82 percent of US consumers owned a credit card (Atlanta Fed Consumer Survey Finds Credit Cards at Top of Wallet). Among those owners, half had one or two cards and almost one-quarter had five or more (Atlanta Fed Consumer Survey Finds Credit Cards at Top of Wallet). Consumers made, on average, 15 credit card payments and 32 percent of their total payments with credit cards in October 2023 (Atlanta Fed Consumer Survey Finds Credit Cards at Top of Wallet). They charged, on average, $1,126 per consumer on credit cards, equal to 21 percent of total value of payments per consumer (Atlanta Fed Consumer Survey Finds Credit Cards at Top of Wallet).

Fee and debt behavior add more texture:

• Sixty-eight percent of credit card owners reported paying no credit card fees in 2023 (Atlanta Fed Consumer Survey Finds Credit Cards at Top of Wallet).
• Thirty-two percent of adopters paid fees, including 20 percent who paid an annual fee and 6 percent who paid a late fee (Atlanta Fed Consumer Survey Finds Credit Cards at Top of Wallet).
• Forty-seven percent of consumers revolved debt on credit cards in October 2023 (Atlanta Fed Consumer Survey Finds Credit Cards at Top of Wallet).

For researchers, this is useful because payment behavior is not just a channel preference. It is also a credit and liquidity signal.

What holiday shopping data adds

Holiday shopping statistics help consumer research connect annual budgets with peak-demand behavior.

In the NRF Thanksgiving weekend survey, 197 million consumers shopped over the five-day holiday period in 2024 (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024). NRF found 126 million consumers shopped in-store and 124.3 million shopped online during that weekend (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024). Black Friday drew 81.7 million in-store shoppers and 87.3 million online shoppers, while Cyber Monday drew 64.4 million online shoppers in 2024 (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).

Those are large numbers, but the more interesting point for research is channel overlap. The weekend did not belong to only one buying mode. Consumers moved between stores and digital shopping across the same period.

A few more details sharpen the picture:

• Saturday drew 61.1 million in-store shoppers during Thanksgiving weekend (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).
• Sixty-three percent of Cyber Monday online shoppers used a mobile device in 2024 (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).
• Department stores and online each attracted 42 percent of Thanksgiving weekend shoppers (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).
• Grocery stores and supermarkets attracted 40 percent, clothing and accessories stores 37 percent, and discount stores 32 percent of Thanksgiving weekend shoppers (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).
• Eighty-six percent of Thanksgiving weekend shoppers purchased gifts and spent $235 on average, $8 more than 2023 (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).
• Fifty-two percent of Thanksgiving weekend shoppers still had holiday shopping left to do after the weekend (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).

Gift categories matter as well. Clothing and accessories were bought by 49 percent of gift shoppers, toys by 31 percent, gift cards by 27 percent, and food and candy and personal care or beauty items by 23 percent each (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).

The 2024 holiday spending projection reached $979.5 billion to $989 billion, up 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent over 2023 (NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024). NRF also projected 2024 retail returns at $890 billion, and 76 percent of consumers said free returns are a key factor in where they shop (NRF 2024 Consumer Returns in the Retail Industry). More than two-thirds of retailers said they would prioritize upgrading returns capabilities within six months, and 93 percent said fraud and exploitive behavior is a significant issue (NRF 2024 Consumer Returns in the Retail Industry).

Those return statistics are especially relevant for consumer research because they connect shopper expectations with operational pressure. Returns are not an afterthought; they are part of the shopping decision.

How to use these statistics in research work

If you are writing, analyzing, or pitching around consumer research statistics, the dataset supports several angles without needing to invent a story around them.

• Use the BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024 figures when you need household budget structure, category weighting, or income quintile comparisons.
• Use the Atlanta Fed payment surveys when you need behavioral evidence about cash, checks, cards, mobile payments, and payment frequency.
• Use the NRF Thanksgiving weekend and returns data when you need retail behavior, channel mix, gift spending, or post-purchase expectations.

A practical way to organize a consumer research brief is to start with the average household budget, then layer on category shares, then split by income quintile, and finally add payment behavior and holiday shopping patterns. That sequence moves from broad structure to observable behavior.

The main takeaway is not that one metric explains consumers. It is that the consumer picture only becomes clear when spending, payment, and shopping data are read together (BLS Consumer Expenditures 2024; Atlanta Fed Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice; NRF Thanksgiving Weekend 2024).