Easter Spending Expected to Reach $18 Billion

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Easter Spending Expected to Reach $18 Billion

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[cnxvideo id=”625498″ placement=”ros”]Although its lags behind the big year-end holidays, Easter is a boom time for many retailers. Consumers will spend $18.4 billion on Easter this year, up 6% to an all-time high.

The amount spent by person will also rise, according to a study from the National Retail Federation (NRF). People who say they celebrate the holiday will spend $152 on average, up 4% year over year.

The record comes after a dip in Easter spending that ran from a recent low of $16 billion in 2014 to this year’s number. Over the period before that, the trend had recovered from the depths of the recession in 2009, when spending was only $12.8 billion, until 2013 when the figure was $17.2 billion.

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Why the improvement? NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said of this year’s Easter spending:

Most consumers have almost an entire extra month to shop for Easter this year, and by the time the holiday comes the weather should be significantly warmer than last Easter. That should put shoppers in the frame of mind to splurge on spring apparel along with Easter decorations. With the economy improving, consumers are ready to shop and retailers are ready to offer great deals whether they’re buying Easter baskets or garden tools.

On that basis, the uptick is barely an uptick at all.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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