The arrival of COVID-19 and the societal disruptions that accompanied it understandably drove a lot of Americans to drink. But even as life has returned to more or less normal this year, the drinking binge has continued — which isn’t great news for anybody other than the makers and sellers of alcoholic beverages.
The consumer spending statistics compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis are the timeliest estimates of alcohol consumption available. They show November’s spending on alcoholic beverages, adjusted for inflation and seasonal spending patterns, to have been 3% higher than a year earlier and 15% higher than just before the pandemic. (1)
Does that really mean Americans are drinking 15% more? Well, maybe. Consumers have been moving for years toward higher-quality, more expensive beer, wine and spirits, which implies that they may not have increased the quantity of their alcohol purchases by quite that much. On the other hand, restaurants’ and bars’ share of overall alcoholic beverage spending is still slightly lower than before the pandemic; given the big markups they charge on drinks, consumption could also be up by even more than spending. The annual consumption estimates published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism are available only through 2020, and they show a 3% per-capita increase in alcohol consumption that year, even as real spending on alcoholic beverages declined 3% because so many bars and restaurants were closed.
