Valentine’s day is expected to pull in a total revenue of $25.9 billion in the United States this year, according to the National Retail Federation. While this is not quite the pre-pandemic peak of $27.4 billion in 2020, spending is recovering once more and if predictions are correct, 2023 will be the second biggest year on record.
This may be surprising given the fact that skyrocketing inflation is hitting products across the board, including popular choices of Valentine’s gifts. As our chart shows, candy (+12.2 percent), hotels and motels (+8.5 percent) and drinks out (+6.9 percent) have all seen price hikes above the overall inflation rate of 6.4 percent between January of 2022 and January 2023. These increases pale in comparison, however, to the rising prices of airline fares, which have shot up more than 25 percent year-on-year.
