Despite Last Year's Resolutions, Americans Are Spending More on Alcohol

On a day in late March 2020, I found myself on the phone with a customer service representative. I honestly don’t remember which bill or service I had called in to discuss. We were less than two weeks into the lockdown, and we were already desperate for human interaction. I was in Pittsburgh, and she was just across the state line in Ohio. Rather than discussing the business at hand, we were engaged in a game of one-upmanship as we compared our pandemic horror stories.

“I’m actually working out of my living room because no one’s allowed to go into the office,” she said.

“Yeah, I mean, I already worked from home, but all my friends have to do Zoom meetings now, too. The governor put out an order.”

“Did you know they shut down our schools in Ohio?”

“Same here! They’re talking about teaching my kids online soon? I don’t know how that’s gonna work. And now you have to make an appointment to go to the grocery store here.”

“We have to do that, too. Plus, they shut our movie theaters down. They’re even saying there’s not going to be room in the hospital soon, so we can’t go in unless we’re actively dying.”

“Yeah, we’re hearing the same thing.” Then I came in with the coup de grace. “In Pennsylvania, they shut our liquor stores down.”

“Lord Jesus,” she said with all reverence. “But this is the time when you need it most.”

Americans upped their alcohol intake in 2020

Americans did indeed increase their drinking habits in 2020. The CSR wasn’t alone in her thoughts — it seemed to many like the year they “needed” alcohol the most.

The world appeared to be ending. In addition to the pandemic, which filled up morgues in New York City to the point where freezer trucks had to be brought in to accommodate the bodies, this was also the year of governmental reactions to Black Lives Matter protests across the country. There were many dramatic scenes, including one led by the president himself in Washington, D.C. In that disorienting year, PocketSmith’s Global Spending Map revealed a 28% increase in year-over-year alcohol spending when controlled for inflation.

Interested in the data? To get these numbers, we calculated all reported American alcohol spending in the quarter starting in September and ending in November for each respective year. We then converted this spending into 2024 dollars to adjust for inflation, allowing us to arrive at an accurate percentage increase or decrease for each period.

America gets sober-curious

Americans stayed pretty drunk in 2021. While it’s true that a not-insignificant portion of the country was determined to return to pre-COVID-19 living and acted accordingly, another large portion stayed isolated even after orders were lifted in order to preserve their own health. After the vaccine was available publicly, some people would start to congregate in relatively small groups with others who had been vaccinated. But society was not yet back in full swing, and people were still salving their loneliness with booze.

From 2020 to 2021, Americans’ alcohol spending decreased by less than 3%, according to Global Spending Map data. It was still 26% higher than it was in 2019.

Something interesting happened in 2022, though. After two years of over-consumption, a surprising number of Americans expressed interest in something called a “sober-curious” lifestyle. The trend flooded social media. While some people straight-up joined Alcoholics Anonymous, others simply slowed down dramatically. They weren’t promising they’d never drink again, but they weren’t going to make it a regular part of their social life anymore.

The numbers reflect the trend. Compared to 2021, Americans spent 23% less * * on alcohol in 2022. That’s after accounting for inflation that skyrocketed in June of that year. It’s notable that this happened during a year when a much larger portion of the population tepidly stepped back into “normal” life and socializing habits.

However, while this was a dramatic year-over-year decrease, total alcohol spending was still 9% higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019. While many people set their drinks down, some people were still consuming more.

Despite New Year’s resolutions, Americans returned to heavy alcohol spending in 2024

For all we’re still hearing about the sober-curious lifestyle, the data reveals that 2022 was the trend’s peak. In 2023 and 2024, reducing alcohol use was cited as a top New Year’s resolution in news story after news story. But the numbers didn’t pan out.

PocketSmith’s data reveals that inflation-controlled, year-over-year alcohol spending went up by 6% in America in 2023. By 2024, it had returned to the exact same level as 2020.

That means that even when you adjust for inflation, Americans are spending just as much now on alcohol as they were at the onset of the pandemic.

This is not the drunkest America’s ever been

America has a rich history of people who drink too much – and people who don’t drink at all, moralizing the issue. Despite the dramatic increase in alcohol spending since the onset of COVID-19, the total average consumption per drinking-age adult during this time period never breached 3 gallons of alcohol-related ethanol per year.

In 1790, shortly after the country was founded, that average was 5.8 gallons per year. It wasn’t uncommon for alcohol to be prescribed as medicine, and even Puritan ministers in the early days of the country went on record endorsing the substance. While public drunkenness was frowned upon in many settings, it wasn’t outside of social norms to get sloshed at celebratory events — which weren’t infrequent. By 1830, consumption had grown to 7.1 gallons per year.

America’s attempts to regulate its alcohol consumption

As this usage was growing, something called the temperance movement started gaining steam. Temperance, by and large, was about an individual’s choice and pledge to either stop drinking altogether or start drinking less. By the time it reached its peak right before the Civil War, it had effectively cut the average American’s ethanol consumption down to a mere 3.5 gallons per year — an impressive feat.

Next came a different political movement called prohibition. While temperance was usually about controlling yourself, prohibition was more about controlling the behavior of other people. There was a famous period of national prohibition in the 1920s and early 1930s.

This was the period when speakeasies were a thing. It was also the period when criminals like Al Capone built their wealth through bootlegging. Capone’s business practices during this time gave us the terminology of “laundering money,” as he’d “clean” his illegal alcohol money by running it through otherwise legitimate laundromats, which he also owned.

By the early 1930s, the American government had to concede prohibition wasn’t working. It was too difficult to enforce, was leading to criminalization and the advancement of organized crime, and was preventing the government from collecting taxes on alcohol sales during a period of severe economic struggle — the Great Depression.

Today, there’s a national drinking age of 21, but alcohol sales are largely regulated at a state-by-state level. Some states, like Pennsylvania, hold a tighter grip on the liquor market, but in many other states, you can buy any type of alcohol in gas stations. That said, some states and localities have rules about purchases on Sundays, reflecting the continued religious moralization of the substance in the law.

Millennials and Gen Z are more likely to be sober-curious in 2024

What’s curious about these latest experiments with sobriety is that they’re largely being led by Millennials and Gen Z — neither of which are a particularly religious lot. Americans started leaving organized religion in large numbers as Millennials came of age, so it wouldn’t appear to have the same religious undertones as past movements.

Gen Z has been known to stay further away from alcohol than previous generations, even prior to the pandemic. While part of the reasoning may be a generational focus on health, another contributing factor is a fear that no prior generation has had to contend with. In today’s day and age, the drunken antics of youth — embarrassing as they are — can easily be streamed and preserved on social media by anyone nearby who happens to be holding a smartphone.

While Millennials did engage in these youthful antics in much larger numbers, they also have to contend with this new, streamed reality as they age. This, combined with the fact that the generation is maturing to a point where their bodies are experiencing physical health consequences, may also be a contributing factor — especially because they’re aging during a global pandemic where the focus on mortality is so acute.

But when we look at the numbers, for every American who has newly dedicated themselves to an alcohol-free lifestyle, there are others who are picking up the slack by picking up the bottle.

Brynne Conroy is an award-winning personal finance writer, creator of the popular women’s finance site, Femme Frugality, and author of The Feminist Financial Handbook, which was an Amazon #1 New Release across multiple categories including Poverty and LGBTQ Demographic Studies. Her work has been cited in academic texts, and she’s spoken at venues such as Vanderbilt University, the Financial Planning Association and the 529 Conference. Here at PocketSmith, Brynne covers personal finance within American financial systems.