Utilities Are What Could Ruin Your Household Budget

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 16, 9:45AM EDT

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Surging electricity and natural gas prices are expected to have an impact on the cost of living for Americans.
AI data centers will continue to be energy hogs.

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Utilities Are What Could Ruin Your Household Budget — © straga / iStock via Getty Images

Americans should expect to spend 5% to 10% of their income on utilities. That includes gas and electricity used in the home. Based on new Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation data, people need to keep track of this because it meaningfully affects their cost of living.

According to the BLS Consumer Price Index for June, inflation rose 2.7% year over year. The figure was slightly higher than expected. Some economists believe this is an early indication of the cost of tariffs. That will not be clear until tariffs of some size are in place later in the year.

The only item in the CPI that rose sharply was “energy services,” which increased by 7.5%. This includes “electricity and piped gas, as part of the Consumer Price Index (CPI).” In particular, electricity was up 5.5% and “utility/piped gas services” was up 14.2%. The second category was the only item of the index that increased by double digits. This includes natural gas used in the home.

According to FRED, utilities/piped gas have been rising fairly steadily since June 2023, while most components of the CPI have had muted increases compared to three years ago.

Lower supply and overseas demand have helped push up the price of natural gas. However, America’s most energy-intensive industry is starting to have a significant impact. Peoples Company points out, “A rapidly evolving driver of natural gas demand in 2025 is the expansion of data centers, especially those powering AI workloads, cloud computing, and digital infrastructure.”

Artificial intelligence data centers will not go away. They may end up being the single largest energy consumer in the United States. Last year, Goldman Sachs predicted that natural gas would be the largest contributor to AI energy needs. Solar and wind energy would not provide sufficient power for years. CNBC reported, “Natural gas producers are planning for a significant spike in demand over the next decade, as artificial intelligence drives a surge in electricity consumption that renewables may struggle to meet alone.”

Recently, experts in energy use have predicted that AI data centers will be the energy hogs of the future. If so, household natural gas prices will continue to rise.

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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.