US average spending per consumer unit reached $81,905 in 2025: housing leads, with survey gaps to note

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on October 29 that average annual spending per “consumer unit” was $81,905 in 2025, up 4.3% from 2024; average income before taxes was $110,847, up 6.4%. A consumer unit can be a group of people who share major living expenses; it does not mean every household has the same number of people, income or housing circumstances. The report lists a 2.6% increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers over the same period; that annual comparison uses only 11 months of data, with the October 2025 CPI missing. Simply subtracting one rate from the other, however, cannot establish a uniform conclusion that all households' “real spending increased”: spending baskets, demographic composition and survey definitions are not identical.¹

Archival photograph: October 1, 2023, Manhattan, New York, United States. Apartment buildings on the bank of East River, Manhattan, New York City. Photograph and copyright: Jakub Hałun; CC BY 4.0.

Housing takes the largest share, but spending is not the same as prices

Housing remained the largest spending category: an average of $27,790 per consumer unit, representing 33.9% of total spending and an increase of 5.8% from the previous year. Within that category, shelter spending rose 8.0%; the table shows spending on rented dwellings up 10.8%. Average food spending was $10,633, up 4.6%; spending on meat, poultry, fish and eggs increased 11.7%. These are changes in amounts spent, affected by prices, quantities purchased and household choices alike. They cannot be described directly as the rates at which the corresponding goods' prices increased.¹

Averages also conceal substantial differences across the distribution. Average annual spending was $37,935 among consumer units in the lowest income quintile and $159,512 in the highest quintile. Treating $81,905 alone as the answer to “how much an ordinary American household needs” overlooks differences in income and household composition, and does not explain the burden of rent in any particular city.¹

Beyond averages, survey gaps also matter

One methodological limitation of this survey cannot be omitted. BLS disclosed that the Census Bureau could not collect survey data in October and November 2025 because of a lapse in federal appropriations that year; BLS adjusted weights for the missing months, and collection resumed on December 5. The annual results therefore remain official estimates, but this data-quality caveat should be retained when comparing detailed categories. Housing's spending share and the increase in food spending provide evidence for discussions of living costs; they are not enough to conclude that every city and every group of workers experienced the same pressures.¹²

Source notes

1. 2026-10-29 10:00 ET · Consumer Expenditures—2025 · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; this article uses the 2025 tables in that release. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Methodological explanation of 2025 data collection; the page does not specify a fixed publication date · 2025 Federal Government Shutdown Impact on the Consumer Expenditure Surveys · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. ↩