Probably not – but I’m sure you can impress your significant other with some of the following statistics on the consumer market surrounding Valentine’s Day:
- All that delicious chocolate that warms the heart and expands the waistline comes from 1,177 U.S. manufacturing establishments and they employ 34,252 people. California leads the nation with 135 establishments followed by Pennsylvania with 111. Aren’t there any big produces in the heartland?
- The 2009 value of shipments of chocolate and chocolate products was $12.6 billion.
- It’s a good thing we don’t eat it all on Valentine’s Day because the per capita consumption of candy in America was 24.7 pounds in 2010.
- 17,124 florists employ 75,855 people and help deliver $375 million of domestically produced cut flowers – and that’s just the wholesale value!
- Retail jewelry stores number about 25,000 and in February of 2011, just one month, they sold $2.27 billion in merchandise. I imagine a good portion of that merchandise included engagement rings to seal the deal on the nearly 6,000 marriages that occur every data on average (that’s 2.1 million for the year 2009).
These are just a few of the plethora of population and economic statistics that come out of the Census Bureau and other federal statistical agencies.
The Census Bureau newsroom does a great job of providing data and alerts to what’s coming out through their Tip Sheets and Facts for Features. If you’re a data junkie, you can subscribe to their feeds and have a regular diet of demographic data.