Clothing expenditure statistics
Published October 20, 2026 · StatsGalore
average annual expenditures on apparel and services per consumer unit in 2024 [1]
This reference summarizes clothing expenditure statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys release for 2024. The source category used here is "Apparel and services," which is the clothing-related major category reported in the release. For all consumer units, average annual expenditures on apparel and services were $2,001 in 2024. The same table reports $2,041 in 2023 and $1,945 in 2022, giving a compact three-year view of the category within household spending. The release also reports that average annual expenditures across all categories were $78,535 in 2024, so apparel and services should be read as one component of a broader consumer budget rather than as total retail clothing sales. [1]
The numbers
| Measure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average annual apparel and services expenditure, 2024 | $2,001 | [1] |
| Average annual apparel and services expenditure, 2023 | $2,041 | [1] |
| Average annual apparel and services expenditure, 2022 | $1,945 | [1] |
| Percent change in apparel and services, 2023-24 | -2.0 | [1] |
| Percent distribution of total annual expenditures: apparel and services, 2024 | 2.5 | [1] |
| Average annual expenditures, all categories, 2024 | $78,535 | [1] |
| Number of consumer units, 2024 | 135,760 thousand | [1] |
What the clothing measure covers
The available source does not provide a separate line labeled only "clothing." It reports the major expenditure component "Apparel and services," and that is the measure used throughout this article. Because the wording includes services, users should avoid treating the figure as a pure estimate of garments alone.
The statistic is an average annual expenditure for consumer units, not a count of people, visits, buyers, accounts, or transactions. The 2024 number of consumer units shown in the same table was 135,760 thousand, which establishes the denominator used for the national consumer-unit estimates in the release.
[1]Headline spending level
The key clothing-related expenditure estimate is $2,001 for apparel and services in 2024. The directly comparable values in the same table were $2,041 in 2023 and $1,945 in 2022. These are reported dollar means from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys, so they describe the average annual amount per consumer unit.
The table also reports a 2023-24 percent change of -2.0 for apparel and services, following a 2022-23 change of 4.9. These figures should be quoted as the source reports them; they are not newly calculated here.
[1]Share of the consumer budget
In the 2024 percent-distribution table, apparel and services is listed at 2.5 in the percent distribution of total annual expenditures. This places the clothing-related category among the major components of total spending, but the figure is a share measure, not a dollar amount.
For context, the same 2024 release reports average annual expenditures of $78,535 for all consumer units across all categories. The apparel and services amount of $2,001 is therefore best interpreted alongside the release’s broader expenditure framework, which includes categories such as food, housing, transportation, healthcare, entertainment, education, and personal insurance and pensions.
[1]How to interpret the trend
The three-year sequence in the release is $1,945 in 2022, $2,041 in 2023, and $2,001 in 2024 for apparel and services. The accompanying percent-change columns report 4.9 for 2022-23 and -2.0 for 2023-24. This is a short comparison period within one annual release, not a long-run history of clothing spending.
BLS explains that asterisks in Table A identify differences in means that are statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence level. Because significance testing concerns differences in dollar means, readers should not assume that every reported percent change is statistically significant unless the source marks it that way.
[1]Data limits and cautions
The release notes that only selected subcategories are shown, so the public passage used here does not provide detailed breakouts such as garments versus apparel services. It also states that some estimates for earlier years differ from previously published annual releases because of post-publication corrections that did not meet the program’s threshold for republication.
The source describes Consumer Expenditure tables as providing expenditure means, shares of total expenditures, standard errors, and relative standard errors. The passage used here supplies the apparel and services mean and share, but it does not include a demographic clothing table or a median clothing expenditure. Accordingly, this article reports means, not medians, and all figures are limited to the cited release text.
[1]Sources & notes
Figures are BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey average annual expenditure means for consumer units. The clothing-related measure is the source category "Apparel and services." The release is for 2024 and includes 2022 and 2023 comparisons; the passage notes selected subcategories only, post-publication corrections for some prior estimates, significance-testing rules, and that additional CE tables may provide more detail.
Source review: 2026-10-20. Article publication and underlying data dates are separate. How we use statistics · Suggest a correction