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Article: T-Shirt and Apparel Statistics: 2026 Data and Sources

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T-Shirt and Apparel Statistics: 2026 Data and Sources

Updated October 2026

A plain T-shirt costs noticeably more than it did a year ago. Clothing prices barely moved through most of 2025, then outpaced overall inflation for most of 2026, just as tariffs climbed and the door closed on duty-free small parcels from overseas.

This page collects the numbers behind that shift and the rest of the T-shirt business: what households spend, what tariffs add, how much clothing ends up in landfills, what shoppers say they want, where they buy, and how much they spend on Halloween costumes and holiday gifts. Every figure links to the agency, company or research group that produced it, with the month it was published.

One thing to know before you start: almost no one counts T-shirts on their own. Most of these figures cover all apparel, all textiles or all retail, and each one says so. We're Tenino Ventures, a small print-on-demand graphic apparel shop, and the figures below are labeled by source and reporting period.

Key Takeaways

  • Apparel prices rose 3.4% in the 12 months to September 2026, just behind the 3.7% rise in consumer prices overall (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oct 2026).
  • Prices for men's shirts and sweaters rose 3.7% over the same 12 months (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oct 2026).
  • The average U.S. household spent $2,001 on apparel and services in 2024 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dec 2025).
  • U.S. Customs processed over 1.36 billion duty-free low-value shipments in fiscal 2024, almost ten times the 139 million it handled in 2015 (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Jun 2026).
  • The average U.S. statutory tariff rate stands at 11.0% (Yale Budget Lab, Aug 2026).
  • U.S. landfills took in 11.3 million tons of textiles in 2018, the latest year EPA has counted (U.S. EPA, Mar 2026).
  • Only 13% of discarded U.S. clothing and footwear was recycled in 2018 (U.S. EPA, Oct 2025).
  • 75% of consumers across 13 countries prefer clothing made of cotton, cotton blends or denim (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • Online sales made up 17.1% of U.S. retail sales in the second quarter of 2026 (U.S. Census Bureau, Aug 2026).
  • Americans plan to spend $13.5 billion on Halloween in 2026, including $4.4 billion on costumes (National Retail Federation, Sep 2026).
  • 47% of consumers are using AI tools to plan or shop for Halloween this year (National Retail Federation, Sep 2026).
  • Clothing and accessories were the most-bought holiday gift as of mid-December 2025, purchased by 48% of shoppers (National Retail Federation, Dec 2025).

How big is the T-shirt and print-on-demand market?

Household clothing budgets have gone flat. The growth is in how clothing gets made and sold, and print on demand, where nothing is printed until someone orders it, is growing far faster than clothing spending overall, even if no two research firms agree on its exact size.

Bar chart of average annual U.S. household spending on apparel and services from 2015 to 2024, dipping in 2020 and peaking in 2023

Figure 1: Household clothing spending dropped sharply in 2020, recovered by 2022 and has stayed near its high since, before adjusting for inflation. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Surveys, Dec 2025. Chart drawn by Tenino Ventures from the published BLS data.

How much do U.S. households spend on clothing?

How big is the print-on-demand market?

Each research firm below uses its own definitions and base year, so read these as separate estimates rather than one trend line.

  • Coherent Market Insights puts the global print-on-demand market at $11 billion in 2026, growing about 22% a year to $58 billion by 2033 (Coherent Market Insights, Jan 2026).
  • Coherent estimates that apparel will make up 31% of print-on-demand revenue in 2026 (Coherent Market Insights, Jan 2026).
  • Coherent expects North America to be the largest region in 2026, with 37% of the market (Coherent Market Insights, Jan 2026).
  • IMARC Group values the market at $11.38 billion in 2025 and forecasts $61.79 billion by 2034, a 20.06% annual growth rate (IMARC Group, Jul 2026).
  • IMARC puts apparel at 46.9% of the market in 2025, the largest product segment (IMARC Group, Jul 2026).
  • IMARC also ranks North America first, with a 37.8% share in 2025 (IMARC Group, Jul 2026).
  • SNS Insider values the market at $11.66 billion in 2025 and forecasts $90.27 billion by 2035, a 22.73% annual growth rate (SNS Insider, Jul 2026).
  • SNS Insider says apparel generated almost 44% of print-on-demand revenue in 2025 (SNS Insider, Jul 2026).

What are tariffs doing to T-shirt prices?

Clothing prices went from one of the calmest corners of the economy to one of the faster-rising ones in about a year, and outran overall inflation from February through August. In September, overall prices sped up and clothing slipped just behind. Tariffs are part of the story. So is the end of duty-free small parcels, which changes who can afford to ship cheap clothing straight to U.S. buyers.

Line chart of the 12-month change in U.S. apparel prices and all consumer prices from January 2025 to September 2026, with apparel above all items from February to August 2026

Figure 2: Year-over-year apparel price changes hovered near zero or below through most of 2025, ran ahead of overall inflation from February to August 2026, then slipped just behind in September. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index, September 2026, Oct 2026. Chart drawn by Tenino Ventures from the published BLS data; BLS did not publish October 2025 figures.

How fast are clothing prices rising?

Changes are for the 12 months to September 2026 and not seasonally adjusted, unless noted.

What do tariffs add to the bill?

These are economy-wide estimates covering all imported goods, not clothing alone.

  • Scheduled increases will lift the average statutory tariff rate to 11.8% by the end of 2026 under current law (Yale Budget Lab, Aug 2026).
  • The Budget Lab estimates current tariffs will ultimately raise consumer prices by about 0.7% (Yale Budget Lab, Aug 2026).
  • That works out to about $1,100 per household per year (Yale Budget Lab, Aug 2026).
  • Current tariffs are projected to raise about $1.9 trillion in revenue over ten years (Yale Budget Lab, Aug 2026).

What happened to duty-free small parcels?

Who makes clothing in the U.S.?

How much clothing ends up in landfills?

Most clothing waste starts as clothing nobody wanted badly enough to keep. That makes how shirts get made, and how many get made before anyone orders them, part of the waste story rather than a side note. EPA's newest national count is from 2018, so each U.S. figure here carries its year, next to newer European and survey data.

Stacked bar chart of U.S. textile waste landfilled, combusted and recycled from 1960 to 2018, growing every decade with landfill the largest share

Figure 3: Textile waste in U.S. trash has grown in every decade since 1960, and landfill took the largest share in every year shown. Source: U.S. EPA, Textiles: Material-Specific Data, 2018 data, page updated Mar 2026. Chart drawn by Tenino Ventures from the published EPA data.

How much textile waste does the U.S. produce?

  • Americans generated 17 million tons of textile waste in 2018, 5.8% of all municipal solid waste (U.S. EPA, Mar 2026).
  • That compares with 1.76 million tons of textile waste in 1960 (U.S. EPA, Mar 2026).
  • 2.5 million tons of textiles were recycled in 2018, a 14.7% recycling rate (U.S. EPA, Mar 2026).
  • 3.2 million tons of textiles were burned with energy recovery in 2018 (U.S. EPA, Mar 2026).
  • Textiles made up 7.7% of everything sent to U.S. landfills in 2018 (U.S. EPA, Mar 2026).
  • Clothing and footwear accounted for 13 million tons of the textile waste generated in 2018 (U.S. EPA, Oct 2025).
  • 9.1 million tons of clothing and footwear went to landfill in 2018 (U.S. EPA, Oct 2025).
  • 2.2 million tons of clothing and footwear were burned with energy recovery in 2018 (U.S. EPA, Oct 2025).
  • EPA's counts leave out clothing that is donated or resold for reuse, because the agency has no estimate for textile reuse (U.S. EPA, Oct 2025).

Those numbers are why we print each of our shirts only after it's ordered, so there's no unsold stock waiting to be thrown out. Our FAQ explains how print on demand works.

How much clothing is recycled worldwide?

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's estimates date from 2017 and cover the global clothing industry.

  • Less than 1% of the material used to make clothing is recycled into new clothing (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Nov 2017).
  • More than $100 billion worth of clothing materials is lost every year as a result (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Nov 2017).
  • Global clothing production roughly doubled over the 15 years before the report (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Nov 2017).
  • Over the same 15 years, the average number of times a garment is worn before it's discarded fell 36% (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Nov 2017).
  • Textile production emitted 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, measured in CO2 equivalent, in the report's estimate (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Nov 2017).
  • Washing plastic-based clothes sheds around half a million tonnes of microfibres into the ocean every year (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Nov 2017).

How does Europe handle textile waste?

  • People in the EU consumed 19 kg of clothing, footwear and household textiles each in 2022, up from 17 kg in 2019 (European Environment Agency, Mar 2025).
  • The EU generated about 16 kg of textile waste per person in 2022, roughly 6.94 million tonnes in all (European Environment Agency, Mar 2025).
  • 85% of household textile waste in the EU was not collected separately in 2022 (European Environment Agency, Mar 2025).
  • The share of EU textile waste sent to landfill fell from 21% in 2010 to 12% in 2022 (European Environment Agency, Mar 2025).
  • Textiles ranked fifth of twelve household consumption categories for environmental pressure in 2022 (European Environment Agency, Mar 2025).
  • In 2020, each EU resident discarded 4.4 kg of textiles through separate collection and 11.6 kg in mixed household waste (European Environment Agency, May 2024).
  • 82% of EU textile waste in 2020 was post-consumer, meaning clothing and household textiles that people threw away (European Environment Agency, May 2024).

How long do people keep their clothes?

Cotton Incorporated, which is funded by U.S. cotton growers and importers, ran the surveys cited here and in the next section, so weigh its findings on cotton with that in mind.

  • U.S. consumers wear a piece of clothing for almost five years on average (Cotton Incorporated, Mar 2026).
  • The top reason people stop wearing clothes is that they no longer fit, cited by 49% (Cotton Incorporated, Mar 2026).
  • 44% stop wearing clothes because of an odor that won't wash out (Cotton Incorporated, Mar 2026).
  • 41% stop because of a stain that won't wash out, and another 41% because of a hole or split seam (Cotton Incorporated, Mar 2026).
  • 59% name quality of construction as a factor in how long clothing lasts (Cotton Incorporated, Mar 2026).
  • To make clothes last, 49% wash them in cold water and 38% hang them to dry (Cotton Incorporated, Mar 2026).
  • If a garment lasts less than six months, 52% of consumers stop buying that brand (Cotton Incorporated, Mar 2026).
  • 81% expect cotton clothing to last longer than clothing made from polyester, rayon or other manmade fibers (Cotton Incorporated, Mar 2026).

What do shoppers want from a T-shirt?

Shoppers say they want cotton, comfort and clothes that last, and many say they'll pay more to get them. These numbers come mostly from the cotton industry's own research and cover clothing in general, but they line up with how people shop: they try things on, feel the fabric and drop brands that fall apart.

Horizontal bar chart of the share of consumers rating cotton clothing best on five attributes, from 67% for most comfortable down to 49% for most sustainable

Figure 4: Cotton wins on comfort and softness by the widest margins and on sustainability by the narrowest. Source: Cotton Incorporated and COTTON USA, 2025 Global Lifestyle Monitor, Oct 2025. Chart drawn by Tenino Ventures from the published survey results.

What fabric do shoppers prefer?

The survey interviewed 13,026 consumers in 13 countries, comparing cotton with polyester and rayon.

  • 67% rate cotton clothing the most comfortable, and 66% the softest (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • 59% rate cotton the best quality, and 56% the most authentic (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • 49% rate cotton the most sustainable of the three fibers (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • 59% of consumers would pay more for clothing made from natural fibers such as cotton (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • Comfort (66%) and quality (63%) are the main reasons they give for paying more (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).

Do shoppers care about sustainability and durability?

  • 75% of consumers are interested in sustainable clothing: 21% call it essential and 54% call it nice to have (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • 83% consider cotton safe for the environment (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • Fewer than half say the same of rayon (48%), polyester (46%) or Tencel (41%) (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • Across nine countries, 85% of Gen X and Boomers, 84% of Millennials and 79% of Gen Z say it's important for clothing to last a long time (Cotton Incorporated, Feb 2026).

Why do shoppers still buy clothes in stores?

  • Trying clothes on is the top reason shoppers prefer stores, cited by 71% (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).
  • 56% prefer stores because they can feel the fabric (Cotton Incorporated, Oct 2025).

What are teens buying?

  • Teens' self-reported annual spending fell 6% year over year to $2,213 in Piper Sandler's fall 2025 survey of 10,969 U.S. teens (Piper Sandler, Oct 2025).
  • Teen spending is down 1% on average over the past ten years (Piper Sandler, Oct 2025).
  • Nike is teens' top clothing brand, followed by Hollister and Brandy Melville (Piper Sandler, Oct 2025).
  • TikTok is teens' most-used social app at 46%, ahead of Instagram at 31% and Snapchat at 14% (Piper Sandler, Oct 2025).

Where do people buy graphic apparel now?

Online keeps taking a bigger share of every retail dollar, and the places independent designers sell, from Etsy and Shopify stores to social feeds and resale apps, are growing faster than retail overall. Clothing stores are still growing too, just not as fast.

Line chart of e-commerce as a share of U.S. retail sales by quarter from 2015 to mid-2026, with a spike in spring 2020 and a steady climb since 2022

Figure 5: The pandemic spike in online shopping faded, but online's share of retail has since passed that peak and is still climbing. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, Aug 2026. Chart drawn by Tenino Ventures from the published Census data.

How much shopping happens online?

  • U.S. online retail sales reached $340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, seasonally adjusted (U.S. Census Bureau, Aug 2026).
  • Online sales grew 12.2% from a year earlier, against 6.7% for retail as a whole (U.S. Census Bureau, Aug 2026).
  • Online sales rose 3.8% from the first quarter of 2026 (U.S. Census Bureau, Aug 2026).
  • A year earlier, online held 16.3% of U.S. retail sales (U.S. Census Bureau via FRED, Aug 2026).
  • Clothing and clothing accessory stores sold $26.5 billion in September 2026, seasonally adjusted, up 5.0% from a year earlier (U.S. Census Bureau, Oct 2026).
  • Nonstore retailers, the group that includes online sellers, grew 8.2% over the same period (U.S. Census Bureau, Oct 2026).
  • Total retail and food services sales rose 6.3% over the same period (U.S. Census Bureau, Oct 2026).

How big are the marketplaces independent designers use?

  • Etsy marketplace sales reached $2.6 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 7.5% from a year earlier (Etsy, Aug 2026).
  • Etsy had about 87 million active buyers over the trailing 12 months (Etsy, Aug 2026).
  • Each active buyer spent $124 on Etsy over the trailing 12 months, on average (Etsy, Aug 2026).
  • New buyer additions grew 7.1% year over year (Etsy, Aug 2026).
  • Etsy's mobile app drove about 47% of marketplace sales (Etsy, Aug 2026).
  • Sales through Etsy's app grew 12.5% year over year (Etsy, Aug 2026).
  • Visits to Etsy from Millennial and Gen Z audiences via YouTube and TikTok grew about 5x year over year in the first half of 2026 (Etsy, Aug 2026).
  • Etsy's revenue was $668 million in the quarter, and revenue for the Etsy marketplace alone grew 9.3% (Etsy, Aug 2026).
  • Merchants on Shopify sold $115.6 billion of goods in the second quarter of 2026, up 32% (Shopify, Aug 2026).
  • Shopify's own revenue rose 34% to $3.58 billion in the quarter (Shopify, Aug 2026).

Are social and resale channels real for apparel?

  • 30% of U.S. TikTok users bought something on TikTok Shop in the 12 months to May 2025 (YouGov, May 2025).
  • Clothing and shoes were the top category, bought by 38% of TikTok Shop buyers (YouGov, May 2025).
  • TikTok users aged 35 to 54 were the most likely to buy, at 41% (YouGov, May 2025).
  • Discounts and promotions were the top draw, cited by 52% of TikTok Shop buyers (YouGov, May 2025).

ThredUp sells secondhand clothing, and the figures below come from research it commissioned from GlobalData.

  • The global secondhand apparel market is projected to reach $393 billion by 2030, growing twice as fast as the overall apparel market (ThredUp, Apr 2026).
  • U.S. secondhand apparel grew nearly four times faster than the broader retail clothing market in 2025 (ThredUp, Apr 2026).
  • The U.S. secondhand apparel market is projected to reach $78.8 billion by 2030 (ThredUp, Apr 2026).
  • Gen Z and Millennials will account for 71% of secondhand market growth through 2030 (ThredUp, Apr 2026).
  • Nearly half of secondhand shoppers now find items through social media, creators and influencer feeds rather than search (ThredUp, Apr 2026).

How big are Halloween and gifting moments?

Halloween is a season now, not a single night, and costumes are the biggest thing people spend on. For the winter holidays, clothing is the gift people buy most.

Horizontal bar chart of planned 2026 U.S. Halloween spending by category, with costumes, decorations and candy each above 4 billion dollars and greeting cards under 1 billion

Figure 6: Costumes, decorations and candy are close to a three-way tie this year, with costumes just ahead. Source: National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics, Halloween consumer survey, Sep 2026. Chart drawn by Tenino Ventures from the published survey results.

How much will Americans spend on Halloween 2026?

  • Shoppers plan to spend $115.14 each on Halloween in 2026, in line with $114.45 in 2025 (National Retail Federation, Sep 2026).
  • Halloween spending set a record of $13.1 billion in 2025 (National Retail Federation, Sep 2026).
  • 74% of consumers plan to celebrate Halloween in 2026, up from 68% before the pandemic in 2019 (National Retail Federation, Sep 2026).
  • 49% plan to start Halloween shopping in September or earlier, up from 34% in 2016 (National Retail Federation, Sep 2026).
  • 34% plan to look for items they can reuse in future years or for other occasions (National Retail Federation, Sep 2026).
  • Discount stores are the top place to buy Halloween items at 39%, ahead of specialty Halloween and costume stores at 32% and online at 27% (National Retail Federation, Sep 2026).

How many people dress up, and in what?

A graphic tee is about the easiest costume there is. Our Halloween shirts and our guide to wearing a Halloween shirt as an easy costume show how it works.

Is clothing a top holiday gift?

  • Shoppers planned to spend $890 each on gifts, food, decorations and other holiday items in 2025, just below the record $902 of 2024 (National Retail Federation, Nov 2025).
  • A record 158.9 million people planned to shop on Super Saturday, the last Saturday before Christmas 2025 (National Retail Federation, Dec 2025).
  • By early December 2025, shoppers had finished about 51% of their holiday shopping (National Retail Federation, Dec 2025).
  • Online was the top place to finish holiday shopping, at 46% (National Retail Federation, Dec 2025).
  • Retail sales from November 1 to December 31, 2025 grew 4.1% over the same period in 2024 (National Retail Federation, Jan 2026).
  • Sales at clothing and accessories stores rose 6.11% year over year in December 2025, before seasonal adjustment (National Retail Federation, Jan 2026).

Methodology and Sources

Every number on this page links to the organization that produced it: a government agency, a company's own filing, or the research firm or survey owner behind the figure. We opened each source and found the number on the original page. Figures we could find only in news coverage or on other statistics roundups were left out, including widely repeated counts of T-shirts owned or made each year and claims about how long a T-shirt takes to decompose, none of which trace back to a study. Most government data covers all apparel, all textiles or all retail rather than T-shirts alone, and each bullet says which. Research from organizations with a stake in the answer is labeled where it first appears: Cotton Incorporated is funded by U.S. cotton growers and importers, and ThredUp runs a resale marketplace. Market-size estimates for print on demand differ by firm, so each appears with its own figure and year. The six charts were drawn by Tenino Ventures from each source's published numbers and are credited in their captions. We recheck every source monthly and update figures as new releases come out; the date under the title shows the latest update.

Sources

Glossary

  • Print on demand: each item is printed after it's ordered, so nothing is made in advance.
  • CPI: the Consumer Price Index, the BLS measure of price changes for what households buy.
  • Producer Price Index: the BLS measure of the prices producers receive for what they make.
  • Consumer Expenditure Surveys: the BLS survey of what U.S. households spend, by category.
  • Seasonally adjusted: figures corrected for regular seasonal swings, such as back-to-school or holiday shopping, so one month can be compared with the next.
  • De minimis: the rule that let imports worth $800 or less enter the U.S. without duty.
  • Statutory tariff rate: the average tariff written into law, before importers change what they buy.
  • GMS and GMV: gross merchandise sales or volume, the total value of goods sold on a marketplace or platform.
  • Municipal solid waste: everyday trash from homes and businesses, as EPA measures it.

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