Skip to footer

Back-to-school stats: How much do Americans spend shopping?

Americans spend billions on back-to-school shopping, whether it is for clothes or books, according to statistics from the US Census Bureau. But maybe the spending is worth it; people with higher degrees still earn more.

|
Mark Bugnaski/The Kalamazoo Gazette/AP
Back-to-school shopping, whether for clothes or books, costs Americans billions, according to US Census Bureau stats. Here, Trever Esman is fitted with a new school backpack by his grandfather Tom Hubbard on Aug. 6, 2012, in Portage, Mich.

We’ve been keeping an eye on all the facts and figures coming out about the great Back To School migration. (Was that really $700 that the National Retail Federation said was the average cost of back-to-school spending for kindergarten through 12th grade?) After all, this is a big time of year for parents and their kids, whether they’re dreading the end of lazy summer days or counting down the minutes until someone else will help entertain (I mean teach) Junior for a good chunk of the day.

So when we saw a new collection of back-to-school stats from the US Census Bureau, we decided we needed to share.

Because check this out: The amount of money spent at family clothing stores in August 2011?  $7.7 billion. Yes, billion. And this consumerism could take place at a wide variety of locations. According to the Census Bureau, there were 28,520 family clothing stores in 2009, along with 7,092 children and infants clothing stores, and 26,651 shoe stores.

But don’t forget the books. August is the strongest sales month of the year for bookstores (flashback here of making my way through the maze of paperback piles at the campus book shop) with purchases totaling some $2.4 billion. And you can get your copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" at some 9,390 bookstores nationwide (as of 2009).

All of this might seem crazy until one considers another stat: More than a quarter of the population age 3 and older is enrolled in school. Sixteen percent of college students are 35 and older, and 72 percent of children aged 3 to 6 are enrolled in full-day kindergarten. All together, that’s 79 million people as of 2010 who are heading back to school – a lot of demand for textbooks and color-coded binders. (Do kids still use binders? Or is everything on an iPad? Help me out here.)

But if this all has you aghast, the Census Bureau also reminds us that staying in school is worth it financially. Although this figure has been sliced and diced, and ends up being more complicated than it might appear (sorry, but humanities graduates just don’t make as much as the engineers), workers with a bachelor’s degree had median earnings of $56,000, compared to the $33,000 of those with a high school diploma. Workers with less than a high school diploma had median earnings of $25,000. 

So go forth and shop for back to school. It is, apparently, the American way.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Back-to-school stats: How much do Americans spend shopping?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2012/0814/Back-to-school-stats-How-much-do-Americans-spend-shopping
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe