American households are now spending nearly half of their budgets on housing and food, the largest share in 15 years.
The average household spent $81,905 in 2025, up 4.3% from the year before, with $27,790 going to housing and $10,633 going to food, says the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Together, the two categories ate up $38,423, or 46.9% of total spending, and cost households $1,988 more than in 2024.
Food and housing were the only major spending categories with statistically significant increases from 2024 to 2025.
Housing spending rose 5.8%, mostly because of an 8% jump in shelter costs, while spending on rented dwellings climbed 10.8%.
Food spending rose 4.6%, driven in part by an 11.7% increase in spending on meats, poultry, fish and eggs.
Says the BLS,
“On average, consumer units spent $27,790 on housing in 2025, which was 33.9% of total average annual expenditures. The next largest shares of total expenditures were transportation (16.5%), food (13%), and personal insurance and pensions (12.4%).”
Setting aside a jump in 2020, the housing share is the highest since 2010, while the 13% food share is the highest since 2011, reports Bloomberg.
Average pretax income rose 6.4% to $110,847 in 2025, outpacing the 2.6% rise in consumer prices over the same period.
The BLS says the Census Bureau could not collect survey data in October and November of 2025 because of the federal government shutdown, so the agency adjusted its weighting to account for the missing months.
