Households in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metropolitan area spent an average of $105,320 per year during 2023–24, according to a report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Acting Regional Commissioner Michael G. Phinney stated that “food, housing, and transportation expenditures together accounted for 62.1 percent of the area’s household budget.” Nationally, these three categories made up 63.2 percent of household spending.
Among the 22 metropolitan areas published nationwide, San Francisco had the highest average annual expenditure at $117,578, while Miami had the lowest at $64,027. Across the United States as a whole, households spent an average of $77,907 per year.
The data comes from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE), which are conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and averaged over a two-year period. The survey covers national figures as well as statistics for four geographic regions and 22 major metropolitan areas.
The Boston-Cambridge-Newton metropolitan statistical area includes Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, and Suffolk counties in Massachusetts along with Rockingham and Strafford counties in New Hampshire.
The Bureau noted that differences in spending between metropolitan areas can be influenced by cost-of-living variations as well as consumer preferences or demographic factors such as household size and income levels. It also cautioned that sample sizes for metro areas are smaller than national samples and that price changes since data collection may affect current relevance.
Additional information about MSA definitions and other Consumer Expenditure Survey releases is available online through the Bureau’s website.
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