Dr. Jadrian Wooten: Halloween spending
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In 2023, Americans spent a record 12 billion dollars on goods related to Halloween, and the number of adult Americans celebrating Halloween exceeded pre-pandemic levels. In 2024, Americans are projected to spend hundreds of dollars per person on the holiday, despite spending less overall.
On Tuesday, October 29, 2024, SciLine interviewed: Dr. Jadrian Wooten, a collegiate associate professor of economics at Virginia Tech. See the footage and transcript from the interview below, or select ‘Contents’ on the left to skip to specific questions.
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Introduction
[0:00:21]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: So, my name is Jadrian Wooten, and I’m a collegiate associate professor of economics at Virginia Tech. And my specialty is actually looking at how economics applies to a lot of different variety of things—so, everything from Halloween spending, all the way down to whether Taylor Swift has an impact on the U.S. economy. So, it really is—I look at myself as an economic generalist, rather than a specialist.
Interview with SciLine
How much are Americans predicted to spend on Halloween in 2024, and how does this compare to the last several years?
[0:00:50]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: So, leading up to this year, we’ve actually seen an increase in spending, kind of steadily, like it’s almost every year—just slowly increases over and over. Some of that is due to inflation, but even when you account for inflation, we’ve generally seen increases year after year—with the exception being this year. So, 2024 actually is expected to spend a little bit less than in previous years. There’s some, I think, noticeable reasons why. So, people are a little burned out from overspending over the past year. So, we’re willing to spend a little bit more—and inflation can capture some of that—but when we spent a lot last year, that leaves us a little bit less to spend this year. So, spending is a little bit down, but we’re still expected to spend about $11.6 billion on Halloween and Halloween-related activities. That comes out to roughly about $104 per person for those participating in Halloween. So—still really big, but not as big as it was last year.
What types of items do consumers purchase for Halloween, and have they changed over the years?
[0:01:55]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: There’s probably only one category that has changed a lot over the past couple years, but sort of the big categories are constantly the same. We’re spending a lot of money on candy—we’re expected to spend about $3.8 billion on candy. Most of us are buying candy to hand out for trick or treating. That’s the biggest category out of all of them. So, candy’s is the biggest one. But you know, there’s also decorations, there’s costumes, there’s pumpkins. We do a lot of different things around Halloween, which both make this really fun, but that’s also how it adds up pretty quickly for people. So, you’re looking at about three and a half to $4 billion on things like costumes, decorations and candy. That is pretty consistent. We spend roughly equal amounts on those three activities. The one thing that I said was changing, which I think is the most interesting one, is greeting cards. So, that still is one of the biggest categories that people spend money on. We spend about half a billion dollars on greeting cards, so not a lot, but you know, in the context of spending that’s still a lot of money. Where that has changed a lot was really actually during the pandemic. So, when we couldn’t hang out with people, we weren’t decorating, we weren’t going to costume parties, people were sending a lot more greeting cards a few years ago, and they’re not now. So that’s come back down to normal levels. But in the past, we used to send a lot more greeting cards and spend a lot more money on greeting cards—but still, a lot, not as much as it used to be.
What drives people to spend money on Halloween?
[0:03:22]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: People have a lot of different reasons. So, families with young kids, you’re spending money on Halloween because you’re taking them trick or treating; you’re carving a pumpkin together; you’re getting them costumes; you’re buying treats for their school classrooms. That’s a very different type of spending than, I would say, older adults who don’t have kids. So people like me—I’m spending money on Halloween because I just want to have a good time for myself. I want to go to costume parties. I want to eat all the candy. I’m still carving pumpkins, but there’s different motivations for each one. So, from an economic standpoint, there’s a very interesting concept known as conspicuous consumption. So, I don’t think this applies to people with young children. I think it applies to people more like me. I want other people to see that I’m having fun on Halloween. I want them to comment on my Instagram post and say, “Wow, that’s a cool looking costume.” I get some happiness out of knowing that other people are looking at my stuff. That sort of spending is generally not a good thing. So, I’m guilty of this. Probably I shouldn’t be doing it. That’s sort of the motivation for like, the two different groups of people. So there’s some, I would say, genuine reasons: small kids—taking them trick or treating. And then there’s the conspicuous consumption group. Maybe not a good thing, but it’s still really important for small businesses who are relying on people like me to go out and buy a pumpkin, to buy candy, to buy decorations. I think they like my conspicuous consumption.
What kind of stores see the biggest profit from Halloween sales?
[0:04:54]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: The biggest driver of Halloween sales is going to be discount stores. So think things like Target, Walmart—that is sort of our top destination for stuff. That’s not the only place we go to shop. Americans are really resilient when it comes to this. We’re really good at finding a bargain. So, while we might buy a lot of stuff at Target and Walmart, we’re really buying, probably mostly our candy there. We’re also shopping at things like specialty Halloween stores, costume shops. So think Spirit Halloween. We’re going to home goods stores. So, think Home Depot and Lowe’s. We’re buying decorations there, but we’re also buying things online. And so one of the really cool things about the data is that we are shopping all over the place. We tend to split our money roughly about a third between discount stores, costume stores, and online shopping. But again, I think it goes back to: we’re really good at finding a deal, and it just depends on what we’re buying, whether we’re buying candy or pumpkins or costumes. We really go to different sources. So lots of people benefit from Halloween spending.
How does Halloween spending impact local economies?
[0:05:58]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: So, the biggest kind of driver on the local side of things is: If you’re shopping at, think like a coffee shop, they might be having a Halloween special, where they’re having Halloween festive or fall-festive coffees—that can go a really long way for businesses. That’s why they participate. They are trying to spread out their earnings over multiple months. That can have a meaningful impact. That money tends to stay in the economy. However, if you’re shopping at places like Target, Walmart, Spirit Halloween—the bigger stores—some of that is staying local. It does help keep people employed, but some of that is also going back to their corporate headquarters. So I would say, on a big picture, it’s likely a really small impact on the overall economy. Where you’re spending money on Halloween decorations, you’re not spending money going out and playing mini golf, and you’re not going to the local theater, you might not be shopping at a local restaurant. So, we’re sort of shifting spending around. But for the companies that are benefiting, they really like this. There is a benefit that exists, but sort of, once we zoom out on a macro scale, it’s probably not as big of a benefit as we’d hope.
If people are shopping for Halloween last-minute, how can they save money?
[0:07:06]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: So, you’re running out of time. If you’re trying to do it for this year, I think one of the best things to do is to try to find places that other people aren’t shopping—the big box stores, they’re probably running low on inventory. They are not going to restock that over the next day or two. And so I think if you’re looking for really good deals, the best places to check out would be local thrift stores or local used goods stores. They still are going to have some stuff, especially if you’re thinking about trying to get creative on a costume, they’re going to have lots of other things that you could possibly sort of repurpose into a costume. Those are really great places. Same thing in the decoration side, but they may be running out on decorations as well. So for this year, you’re running out of options. But it’s never too early to think about next year. So if you are a really big Halloween person and you’re looking for ways to save money for next year, November 1 is the best day to buy Halloween stuff. So, if you don’t care that your candy is wrapped in orange paper, go get some candy—it’s usually always half off. Any leftover Halloween decorations are probably going to be half off at most stores. And then over the next couple weeks, what you’ll see is thrift stores and discount stores will have people who donated their Halloween decorations because they don’t have space in the garage. And so you can go get some really cool stuff for next year, assuming that you have space in your garage.
Does Halloween spending follow similar patterns to other holidays or seasonal events?
[0:08:29]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: So, this year is probably the only exception where it’s not following the trends that we expect. So, if we look across other big spending categories, the biggest one is back-to-school shopping. But then, sort of holiday wise, the biggest one is the winter holidays. So think Christmas and Hanukkah, for example. Those have seen increases, and we expect to see people spending more money on winter holidays. We’ve already seen that they spent more money on back to school. So, Halloween is a little bit of an anomaly this year. In the past, it has trended the same way. As people spend more, they spend more on Halloween. But for some reason, Halloween this year is not following that exact same trend. It’ll be interesting to see why. It’s possible that this is, I don’t want to say, a marginal holiday, but back-to-school is really important for children. The winter holidays tend to be really big for families. So this one is not as big of a holiday for most people, but we’re still spending a lot of money. But it’s going in the opposite direction of the other holidays.
How can consumers reduce their environmental impact this Halloween?
[0:09:33]
JADRIAN WOOTEN: So, I think the one thing that I always like to end with in this section is thinking about, sort of our environmental impact. Economists do study environmental impacts, and so I think it’s worth talking about trying to minimize the environmental impact if you can. So, there’s some things that are a little bit harder to do. So, candy is going to be wrapped in single plastics. It’s really hard to kind of move away from that. You probably shouldn’t be giving out unwrapped candy. That’s probably an easy one to say. But when it comes to Halloween decorations, it’s really thinking about not throwing it away, actually donating it to a thrift store, if you can. If you’re looking at purchasing new decorations, trying to go to thrift stores to buy those things. Try to reuse as much as you can. If possible, see if any of that material is recyclable, or in the last sense, try to repurpose it into something else. We do spend a lot of money on Halloween, which means we do buy a lot of things for Halloween. And so I think it’s really important to think about: How do we make sure that that’s not just a one time purchase, that that’s something that can be used over and over and over again.
