Americans are expected to spend about $13.5 billion on Halloween this year, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey, with roughly three in four consumers planning to celebrate and average spending of about $115 per person, roughly in line with last year. About half of shoppers aim to start in September or earlier, a habit that has turned a single-night holiday into a two-month retail season.
The early starters are motivated by enthusiasm as much as thrift: more than four in ten say they simply look forward to fall, and a third call Halloween a favourite holiday. Among those watching costs, about a third plan to buy items reusable in later years, a quarter hunt coupons, and roughly a fifth say early prices were too good to miss. If items cost more than expected, comparing prices is the first resort, shoppers say.
Retailers have learned to meet the season where it starts. Youth-fashion chains have opened their largest Halloween storefronts yet this year, pairing costume and party merchandise with nostalgia programming, one chain is hosting double-feature screenings of two cult horror-comedy classics at a vintage California cinema, with shopping built into the evening.
The federation’s numbers describe a holiday that has fully escaped its category: decorations rival Christmas in some neighbourhoods, adult costumes outsell children’s, and retailers now plan for Halloween the way they once planned only for December.
With consumer budgets under the pressure documented elsewhere in this issue, $13.5 billion for a single night of ghosts is either a contradiction or an explanation. Small, social, photographable pleasures are the last line items Americans cut, and Halloween, cheap at the individual level and communal by design, is built to survive a careful year.
Retail federations read Halloween as a confidence index in disguise: households cutting everywhere else still fund costumes, candy and decorations because the spending is shared, visible and done for other people, children above all. That may be why the number holds up in a year of smaller holiday budgets announced for December. October’s ghosts, it turns out, are among the last expenses American families consider optional.
US News Zone will continue to follow this story as further results are confirmed.
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