Footwear spending at a glance

I built this page because every shoe spending article I read gave a different number and almost none said what it was counting. Below you’ll find what I could trace to a real source, what kind of evidence each number is, why the headline figures disagree, and what I left out. If you’re budgeting rather than researching, jump to working out your own budget, or read my footwear buying guide. For the market side, see my US footwear market statistics.

Key findings

1. There is no official per-person figure. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) measured US household footwear spending at $121.15 billion in 2025, which works out to about $354 per person (my calculation). The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey puts the average household at $461 in 2024.
2. Total spending is up 4.4% on 2024’s $116.06 billion. Other sources give lower totals: about $90 billion for 2025 (Circana, as reported by MR Magazine) and $97.16 billion (IMARC).
3. Two federal measures disagree. For 2024, scaling the BLS household average to every household gives $62.6 billion, while BEA reports $116.1 billion, about 1.85 times as much. I found no published footwear-specific explanation, so I don’t assign a cause.
4. Footwear is a small slice of the budget: 0.59% of the $78,535 the average household spent in 2024. Apparel and services together were 2.5%.
5. Age matters more than most people expect. Households headed by someone aged 35 to 44 spent $648 in 2024, about 4.1 times the $159 spent by those aged 75 and over. Households aged 25 to 34 spent 53% more in 2024 than in 2021.
6. Income matters too, but the data is noisy. The top fifth of households spent $840 and the bottom fifth $302, about 2.8 times as much. The bottom fifth was $130 in 2022.
7. Spending is up, mostly through volume rather than higher prices. From 2019 to 2025 BEA footwear spending grew 31.9% in dollars, footwear prices rose 6.9%, and spending after prices rose 23.4%.
8. Shoe stores sell the most in December and August. December 2025 was 11.9% of the year’s $38.72 billion in shoe-store sales and August 11.2%, against 5.6% for January.
9. Back-to-school is a real shoe season. NRF found K-12 shoppers planned to spend $174.01 on shoes in July 2026, $8.7 billion in total, about one dollar in five of their back-to-school budget.
10. The 2026 signals are mild. Shoe-store sales for January to July were up 2.9% on a year earlier while footwear prices were up 3.4% in July, and Circana reported dollar sales up 1% in the first half with units down.

What we know and what we don’t

Here’s where the public evidence stands as of October 2026.

15 footwear spending statistics you can cite

Each card has one number, one sentence of context and its source. “Copy text” opens a box with the sentence, the source and a link back here. Please cite the original source for any single statistic. Cards marked E are my own calculations, and the method is on the card or in the dataset.

How much does the average American spend on shoes in a year?

I started by looking for an official per-person figure and there isn’t one. The government publishes spending in two forms. BEA publishes a national total, and BLS publishes what a typical household reports spending in its Consumer Expenditure Survey. To get a per-person number I divided BEA’s $121.15 billion for 2025 by the 341.9 million people BEA counts, which gives about $354. That figure spreads spending across everyone, including children, and across every kind of seller, so don’t read it as what an adult spends on their own shoes. It is mine, not a published statistic.

The other figures I found are all over the place. This table shows what each one covers and what I was able to check.

<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/"><img src="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/usf-six-answers-annual-shoe-spending-per-american.png" alt="Chart of six answers to annual shoe spending per American, from $174 to $735, with $354 per person from BEA data" width="800" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: UrbanStyle Footwear, based on BLS, BEA, KURU Footwear, NRF and RunRepeat figures compared by UrbanStyle Footwear. <a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/">Footwear Spending Statistics 2026</a></figcaption></figure>

Why the numbers differ

• Person or household. BLS reports per “consumer unit”, which is close to a household. A household can be one person or six, so $461 is not comparable with a per-person figure.
• Who answers. BEA estimates national spending. BLS asks households what they bought. KURU asked people to recall a year of buying, and its sponsor sells shoes.
• How long. The NRF number is one season for families with school-age children. The others are a year.
• When. The oldest figure I found is from 2023, and the RunRepeat and Packlane figures carry no year at all.

The BEA-based number is about 48% higher than the KURU survey answer ($354 against $240). I can’t tell you why, because the survey page gives little method, and I’d rather say that than guess.

My read. For a household budget I’d use the BLS figure and for a national comparison I’d use the BEA figure. I would not use the $735, since I couldn’t trace it to anything.

How does footwear spending change with age?

BLS publishes footwear spending by the age of the household’s “reference person”, roughly the person who owns or rents the home. I read all seven age groups for 2021 to 2024. Pick a group below to see its four-year numbers and how it compares with the average.

<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/"><img src="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/usf-footwear-spending-by-age-of-household-head-2024.png" alt="Chart of footwear spending by age of household head in 2024: $648 for ages 35 to 44, $159 for ages 75 and over" width="800" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: UrbanStyle Footwear, based on BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey data, 2024. <a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/">Footwear Spending Statistics 2026</a></figcaption></figure>

• Household, not person. A household headed by someone aged 35 to 44 can include children, and children need shoes. That may be part of why this group spends the most, but BLS doesn’t say, and I haven’t checked household sizes.
• Single years bounce. The under-25 group fell from $325 to $256 in 2024 and 55 to 64 rose from $374 to $483. BLS publishes standard errors that I haven’t read, so I haven’t tested whether those moves are statistically significant. The four-year pattern is more reliable than any one year.
• Younger adults are spending more. Households aged 25 to 34 went from $348 in 2021 to $534 in 2024, the fastest climb of any group.

Do richer households spend more on shoes?

BLS also splits households into five equal groups by income before taxes. The pattern is not a smooth ladder. The lowest and second fifths were almost identical in 2024 ($302 and $299), and the fourth fifth fell from $575 to $450 in a year while the top fifth kept rising.

<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/"><img src="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/usf-footwear-spending-by-household-income-2024.png" alt="Chart of 2024 household footwear spending by income: $840 for the top fifth, $302 for the lowest fifth" width="800" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: UrbanStyle Footwear, based on BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey data, 2024. <a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/">Footwear Spending Statistics 2026</a></figcaption></figure>

• The bottom jumped. The lowest fifth spent $130 in 2022, $214 in 2023 and $302 in 2024. I wouldn’t read a trend into a swing that large from a survey, and I haven’t checked its standard error.
• The top is steady. The highest fifth went $625, $771, $840 over the same three years, and its 2024 figure is 82% above the all-household average of $461 (my calculation).
• Not a share of income. These are dollars. I haven’t worked out what share of each group’s budget they represent, because I didn’t pull each group’s total spending.

How much does the US spend on footwear in total?

I use BEA for national totals because it is an official, annual series that can be adjusted for inflation. Other sources are useful as cross-checks, but they define the market differently and mostly don’t publish how.

<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/"><img src="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/usf-five-estimates-total-us-footwear-spending.png" alt="Chart comparing five estimates of total US footwear spending: BEA $121.2B, IMARC $97.2B, Circana $90B, BLS $62.6B" width="800" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: UrbanStyle Footwear, based on BEA, IMARC, Circana, BLS and Census figures compared by UrbanStyle Footwear. <a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/">Footwear Spending Statistics 2026</a></figcaption></figure>

The 85% gap between two federal numbers

This is the one I spent the most time on. For 2024, BEA reports $116.06 billion. If I take BLS’s $461 per household and multiply by the 135.76 million households it counts, I get $62.6 billion. BEA is about 1.85 times higher, a gap of roughly $53 billion. On a per-person basis that is $341 against $184.

The two programs use different methods. BLS asks households what they bought, and BEA estimates spending for the whole economy. The people covered are not exactly the same either. I looked for a published explanation of the footwear gap specifically and didn’t find one, so I’m not going to assign a cause. What I do is use BEA for totals and per-person estimates, and BLS to compare groups with each other, because the ratios between groups don’t depend on the level.

If you’re writing about online sales, the dollar estimates in my online shoe shopping statistics page imply markets larger than BEA’s total, which is another reason to check what any “market size” is measuring.

Is footwear spending rising, and is it just prices?

The BLS household average tells a gentler story. It went from $419 in 2019 to $461 in 2024, up 10.0%, or about 3% once I adjust for footwear prices. Both series show the same shape: a pandemic dip, a sharp rebound and growth since.

<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/"><img src="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/usf-us-household-footwear-spending-2015-2024.png" alt="Chart of average US household footwear spending 2015 to 2024, rising from $354 to $461 after a 2020 dip to $314" width="800" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: UrbanStyle Footwear, based on BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey data, 2015 to 2024. <a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/">Footwear Spending Statistics 2026</a></figcaption></figure>

• The 2020 dip. The BLS average fell 25% in 2020, from $419 to $314. BEA’s total fell 11.4% that year and then rose 29.9% in 2021.
• Prices have lagged other things. The footwear consumer price index rose 7.0% from December 2019 to December 2025, against 26.1% for all items. That is part of why spending after prices looks strong.
• 2026 is warmer on prices. The footwear index was up 3.6% in August 2026 from a year earlier, against 3.4% for all items.

When do Americans spend the most on shoes?

Census publishes monthly sales for shoe stores, so this is the only monthly view I could trace to an official source. I summed the twelve months of 2025 to $38.72 billion and worked out each month’s share.

<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/"><img src="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/usf-us-shoe-store-sales-by-month-2025.png" alt="Chart of US shoe-store sales by month in 2025, peaking at $4.59 billion in December and $4.34 billion in August" width="800" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: UrbanStyle Footwear, based on US Census Bureau Monthly Retail Trade data for shoe stores, 2025. <a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/">Footwear Spending Statistics 2026</a></figcaption></figure>

• Two peaks. December is the holiday season and August lines up with back-to-school, though Census doesn’t say why. No other month gets above 9.2% (July).
• Sales are not discounts. A busy month means people bought, not that prices were low. I haven’t measured discounts, so I can’t tell you which month is cheapest.
• 2026 so far. Shoe-store sales for January to July 2026 were $21.30 billion, up 2.9% on the same months of 2025 ($20.71 billion), not seasonally adjusted. Footwear prices were up 3.4% in July, so volume through shoe stores looks roughly flat.
• What it leaves out. Shoe stores were only about 32% of household footwear spending in 2025. Department stores, sports retailers, warehouse clubs and online sellers are not in this series, and Census counts the online sales of companies with stores elsewhere.

How much do families spend on back-to-school shoes?

This is the most recent spending number with a shoe line in it. NRF’s survey of 7,677 consumers ran July 1 to 8, 2026, with a margin of error of 1.1 percentage points.

<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/"><img src="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/usf-back-to-school-spending-by-category-2026.png" alt="Chart of 2026 K-12 back-to-school spending per shopper: electronics $293, clothing $250, shoes $174, supplies $146" width="800" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: UrbanStyle Footwear, based on NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics 2026 back-to-school survey. <a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/">Footwear Spending Statistics 2026</a></figcaption></figure>

• The categories add up. Electronics ($293.11), clothing and accessories ($250.29), shoes ($174.01) and school supplies ($146.45) sum exactly to the $863.86 average (my check).
• Everyone, not only buyers. $8.7 billion divided by $174.01 is about 50 million shoppers, the same base as the $43.3 billion total. That tells me the shoe average includes every K-12 shopper, not just those who plan to buy shoes. That’s my inference from the arithmetic, not something NRF states.
• Total spending is planned to rise. NRF puts K-12 spending at a record $43.3 billion against $39.4 billion in 2025, up 9.9% (my calculation). I didn’t find a 2025 shoe figure to compare, so I can’t say whether shoes went up.
• Online is slipping. 50% of K-12 shoppers planned to shop online, down from 55% in 2025. That’s all back-to-school items, not only shoes.
• Athletic is expected to grow. AlixPartners and FDRA’s June 2026 survey expected athletic and athleisure spending to rise 11%.
• College is separate. NRF reports college spending of $103.5 billion but gives no shoe line for it.

Are people buying more pairs or paying more per pair?

• Circana, first half of 2026. Total US footwear dollar sales were up 1%, unit sales fell overall and average selling prices rose. Performance footwear rose 6% and running 13%. Circana gives no percentages for units or price.
• Circana, 2025. Dollar sales “held steady in 2025 at $90 billion” and units fell in the low single digits. In the fourth quarter dollars rose 2% on average prices up 8%, with units down. (Reported by MR Magazine.)
• AlixPartners and FDRA, spring 2026. Price is the number one influence on what people buy and the number one reason they abandon a purchase. Among those planning to spend more, 39% said they would buy the same amount and pay more per pair, up from 35% in 2025.
• Not for lack of need. Among those planning to spend less, only about 3 in 10 said it was because they don’t need shoes, down from over half in 2025. The report reads this as an affordability problem.

I’d call this a reasonable picture rather than a measured fact. The surveys record intentions, Circana’s tracking has its own coverage, and no source I could read splits the change in dollars into volume and price for 2026.

Who measures what

Footwear spending can be counted in five ways, and each source on this page does one of them. That’s the main reason the numbers don’t line up. Select a step to see what is counted and how I use it.

What I’m watching next

I don’t forecast. These are the releases that would change this page, and what I’ll do when they land.

• BLS 2025 Consumer Expenditure results. The latest available are for 2024, released December 19, 2025. When 2025 appears I’ll update every household, age and income figure.
• Monthly Census retail trade. New shoe-store months arrive regularly. I’ll refresh the 2026 comparison at my next review.
• Circana’s full-year 2026 report. The 2025 report appeared on February 5, 2026, so I expect early 2027.
• NRF back-to-school 2027. Next July. It would give a second year for the shoe line.
• The regional split. BLS publishes footwear spending by region. I’ll add it once I can read all four regions.
• A real reconciliation. If BEA or BLS publish a footwear-specific explanation for the gap between their numbers, or you know of one, email me.

Every change goes in the freshness log.

Where other shoe spending articles go wrong

I read several of the pages that rank for this topic before writing. They’re a useful starting point, and they share some habits I tried to avoid.

• Problem 1They state a yearly figure with no year or source, and sometimes two conflicting figures in one article.
• Problem 2They mix per-person, per-household and per-season numbers as if they were the same.
• Problem 3They quote a market-research total as “what Americans spend” without saying how it was built.
• Problem 4They give a percentage with no base, such as a household spend of “38%” with nothing to say 38% of what.
• Problem 5They don’t date the numbers, so a 2020 or 2023 figure sits in a 2026 article.
• Problem 6They read a rise in dollars as buying more, without checking prices.
• Problem 7They quote one survey without saying that a shoe brand ran it.
• Problem 8They give false precision where the honest answer is a range.
• Problem 9They never say what the figure leaves out.

Working out your own shoe budget

This is practical advice, separate from the research above. National averages are a sanity check, not a target.

1. Start with your own year. Count the pairs you bought last year and what you paid. If you’re at $461 for a household, you’re average. If you’re well above, check whether it’s running shoes you replace often or a few big purchases.
2. Budget by person. A household with children will spend more because kids outgrow shoes. For school-age children, NRF’s 2026 number of $174.01 per family is a reasonable starting point for the back-to-school round.
3. Don’t confuse busy with cheap. Stores sell the most in August and December, but I haven’t measured discounts. Compare prices, and see my Prime Day shoe deals.
4. Spend where it counts. A pair you wear daily or run in is worth more than a pair you wear twice. My best running shoes under $100 and New Balance vs Brooks vs Hoka comparisons help.
5. Get the size right. A wrong size costs you the price of the shoe or the hassle of a return. Measure first with my foot measuring guide and use the size conversion calculator. See also my shoe return statistics.
6. Plan for prices to creep up. The footwear price index was up 3.6% in August 2026 from a year earlier, so a budget that was enough last year may buy slightly less.

Sources and evidence tiers

Evidence hierarchy

• APeer-reviewed research. Original data in a peer-reviewed journal. I found none on household footwear spending and none is cited here.
• BOfficial statistics. BEA, BLS and Census Bureau data. The strongest evidence on this page, though the two federal measures of footwear spending disagree.
• CIndustry research, surveys and company statements. NRF and Prosper, AlixPartners and FDRA, Circana, IMARC and the KURU survey. Useful, but the publisher may have a commercial interest.
• DSecondary reporting. Articles that report a figure I couldn’t open at its source, or that give no source at all, such as the RunRepeat and Packlane figures.
• EEstimates and calculations. My own arithmetic and comparisons, with the method stated.

Primary versus secondary data

Primary source: the organisation that collected or published the data. Secondary source: an article summarising someone else’s data. Where I could only read a secondary source, the table says so.

Source table

Methodology and limitations

How I built this page. I started with official statistics, then survey publishers’ own reports, then market research, and only then articles. For each figure I recorded the source, date, sample and what kind of evidence it is, and I opened the original wherever it was open to me. Where I calculated something, such as a per-person figure, a share, a sum or a change, it’s labelled E and the method is in the dataset. I read the BEA, BLS, Census, NRF, KURU, Circana, IMARC, RunRepeat and Packlane pages on October 9, 2026.

What I left out. I didn’t use any yearly spending figure I couldn’t tie to a named source (the $735 and the $350 appear only to show that they are unsourced), a “38% household spend” with no base, or figures for spending by gender. I also left out spending by region. BLS publishes it, but I could read only two of the four regional series, and a half-finished split would mislead.

Limitations you should know about

• BEA and BLS disagree. For 2024 the BEA total is about 1.85 times the BLS-implied total, and I found no published reconciliation. Every per-person and total figure here depends on which one you accept.
• My per-person figure is a calculation. It divides national spending by everyone in the population, including children, and uses BEA’s population estimate, which differs a little in coverage from BLS’s.
• BLS figures are per household and from a survey. They are noisy, particularly for small groups such as households under 25 and the lowest income fifth. I haven’t read or tested the standard errors.
• Age and income figures are one reference person’s group, and household size is mixed in.
• The after-prices BLS figure is approximate. I divided each year by BEA’s footwear price index, which mixes a survey with a national-accounts index.
• The NRF shoe line is planned spending. It covers one season for families with school-age children, and my reading that it covers all K-12 shoppers is an inference from the arithmetic.
• The Circana $90 billion is reported second-hand. I read it in MR Magazine, not in a Circana document, and it is rounded.
• Shoe-store sales are narrow. They cover one kind of store and are not seasonally adjusted.

Data freshness

Last full source review: October 9, 2026. Next scheduled review: January 2027.

Corrections. If you spot an error or have better data, email info@urbanstylefootwear.com with the subject “Data correction”. I’ll check it and note any change in the table above. How I test and review products is explained in our methodology.

For journalists and researchers

You can use the statistics and charts on this page with credit to UrbanStyle Footwear. Wherever you can, please cite the original source printed with each statistic. My own calculations are marked tier E and can be cited to me.

Media kit

Cite this page

<a href="https://urbanstylefootwear.com/footwear-spending-statistics/">Footwear Spending Statistics 2026 by UrbanStyle Footwear</a>

Related resources

More from UrbanStyle

• Online shoe shopping statistics 2026
• Shoe return statistics 2026
• US footwear market statistics 2026
• Shoe size statistics 2026
• Ultimate footwear buying guide
• Footwear knowledge hub
• How to measure foot size at home
• Shoe size conversion calculator
• New Balance vs Brooks vs Hoka
• Best running shoes under $100
• Prime Day shoe deals
• How we test shoes
• Contact

Primary sources

• BEA via FRED
• BEA real spending via FRED
• BEA footwear price index via FRED
• BEA population via FRED
• BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey
• BLS CE footwear by age
• BLS CE footwear by income
• BLS CE news release
• Census shoe-store sales
• BLS CPI, footwear
• BLS CPI, all items
• NRF and Prosper, back-to-school 2026
• AlixPartners and FDRA, spring 2026
• AlixPartners and FDRA, back-to-school 2026
• Circana, first half 2026
• Circana 2025 via MR Magazine
• IMARC Group, 2026
• KURU Footwear survey, 2023
• RunRepeat, 2023
• Packlane, 2026