Business Plan Research: Target Market

provide information on the buying habits of American consumers, including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer unit characteristics. The survey data are collected for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau.

This annual report includes integrated data from the Diary and Interview portions of the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) including one-page data tables. "The tables show average expenditures, income, and characteristics for consumer units classified by 13 characteristics--quintiles of income, before-tax income class, age, size of the consumer unit, composition of the consumer unit, number of earners, housing tenure, race, type of area (urban or rural), Hispanic origin of reference person, region, occupation, and education. The report also includes a brief discussion of expenditure changes for the year, a description of the CE survey, and a short glossary."

Average expenditures per consumer unit(1) for July 2018 through June 2019 were up 2.7 percent compared with the July 2017 through June 2018 midyear average, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. During the same period, the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) rose 2.1 percent and average pretax incomes increased 6.4 percent.