The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks exactly one line item for this category: “jewelry and watches,” inside its annual Consumer Expenditure Survey. In 2024, the most recent full year on record, the average American household spent $214 on it — up from $189 just two years earlier, a 13.2% jump that outpaced overall household spending growth over the same stretch. That single average hides a lot: an engagement-ring market where lab-grown diamonds went from a minority choice to the majority pick in about half a decade, and an income spread wide enough to make an “average” nearly beside the point. Below is what the primary data actually shows, with every source attached, rather than the round numbers that circulate on marketing blogs without a citation behind them.
What U.S. Households Actually Spend on Jewelry
The Consumer Expenditure Survey is the government's own measure of what households buy, built from interviews and purchase diaries kept by thousands of families every year — the same dataset used to calculate the Consumer Price Index. Its jewelry and watches line moved from $189 in 2022 to $201 in 2023 to $214 in 2024: a steady climb rather than a single spike, which matters because it rules out a one-off event (a holiday season, a single viral trend) as the explanation.
Measured against the household budget as a whole, that climb is notable. Total average annual expenditures across all categories rose from $72,973 in 2022 to $78,535 in 2024, a 7.7% increase, while jewelry and watches grew 13.2% over the identical period — nearly double the pace. Whatever is driving jewelry purchases right now, it isn't simply inflation carrying every category up together; the category is gaining share of the household budget, not just riding along with it.
Averages Hide a Very Uneven Spread
The Bureau doesn't publish jewelry spending broken out by income tier in its public release, but its overall expenditure data by income quintile shows how skewed an “average” can be for any discretionary category. Total household spending across every category in 2024 ranged from $35,046 for the lowest income quintile to $150,342 for the highest — more than four times as much, covering housing, transportation, healthcare and everything else, including whatever share of that $214 jewelry average belongs to each group.
This is the same statistical problem behind every “average American” headline: a mean gets pulled hard by a comparatively small number of high spenders. A household in the top income quintile buying a $2,000 anniversary piece and four households in the bottom quintile buying nothing at all still average out to $400 apiece on paper. When spending power is this concentrated, a single national average describes very few actual households well — it's a useful benchmark for an industry, not a target for any one buyer.
The Engagement Ring: Jewelry's Single Biggest Purchase
No other jewelry purchase gets surveyed like the engagement ring, and no other purchase carries as much inherited pressure about what it “should” cost. The old two-months'-salary guideline traces to a De Beers advertising campaign from the mid-20th century, not to any actual buying pattern — and the real data has never supported it. The Knot's 2025 Real Weddings Study, based on more than 10,000 U.S. couples, put the average spend at $4,600.
That average is pulled upward by a smaller group of big spenders, the same pattern seen in the household data above: roughly a third of couples spent under $3,000, nearly two-thirds spent under $6,000, and only about 13% crossed the $10,000 mark. If you're weighing where your own budget lands, our guide to what an engagement ring actually is walks through the history and traditions behind the purchase before the price tag enters the picture, and engagement ring vs. wedding ring explains why many couples end up budgeting for two rings, not one.
The Lab-Grown Diamond Takeover
The bigger shift in that same study is what couples are actually putting in the ring. In 2024, lab-grown diamonds passed the halfway mark as a center stone for the first time; by the 2025 study, 61% of engagement rings sold carried a lab-grown center stone, The Knot reported — a 239% increase since 2020. That is one of the fastest consumer-preference shifts recorded in the jewelry industry, and it lines up with the budget math above almost exactly.
Price is the obvious driver: the study put the average lab-grown diamond ring at $5,188, against $10,760 for a natural diamond ring, a gap of well over double for a stone that is chemically and visually the same material. That kind of price-for-look tradeoff is exactly what we cover in our moissanite vs. diamond comparison: buyers are increasingly choosing a stone that reads as identical at the point of sale and putting the difference toward the wedding, the down payment, or a larger stone altogether.
What the Numbers Mean If You're Buying
None of this data suggests jewelry spending is a one-time event. The same survey that tracks the $214 household average shows total spending climbing every year measured, and the calendar keeps giving people reasons to buy well after the wedding — our guide to 25th and 50th anniversary jewelry gifts covers what couples actually give each other decades in, and the milestones in between tend to follow the same value-conscious pattern documented here.
The throughline across every figure in this piece is the same: real dollars are shifting toward value without buyers feeling like they're compromising, whether that shows up as a lab-grown center stone at less than half the price, or simply a household spending $25 more than it did two years ago. Neither looks like restraint from the outside — both are, on the numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the average American household spend on jewelry per year?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey, the average U.S. household spent $214 on jewelry and watches in 2024, up from $201 in 2023 and $189 in 2022 — a 13.2% increase over two years.
Is the average engagement ring really $4,600?
That figure comes from The Knot's 2025 Real Weddings Study of more than 10,000 U.S. couples. It's an average, not a typical price: roughly a third of couples spent under $3,000, and only about 13% spent $10,000 or more, so the average is pulled up by a smaller group of high spenders.
Why are lab-grown diamonds cheaper than natural diamonds?
Lab-grown diamonds are chemically and optically identical to natural diamonds, but they're grown in weeks rather than formed over geological time and mined, so they carry none of the extraction cost or scarcity premium built into a natural stone's price. The Knot's 2025 data put that gap at $10,760 for an average natural diamond ring versus $5,188 for lab-grown.
What share of engagement rings sold today are lab-grown diamonds?
61%, according to The Knot's 2025 Real Weddings Study — the first year lab-grown diamonds represented a clear majority of center stones, and a 239% increase since 2020.
Does jewelry spending vary a lot by income level?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't publish jewelry spending broken out by income bracket. But its overall expenditure data shows the highest-income households spend more than four times what the lowest-income households do across all categories combined ($150,342 versus $35,046 in 2024), which suggests any single national average is doing a lot of flattening.
