Residential Electric, Gas
On average, across all the households in the U.S., in 2024, residential electric service took up 1.28 percent of consumer expenditures. As a fraction, that’s approximately one dollar of every seventy-eight dollars of expenditures that went to pay electric bills.
Residential natural gas service took up 0.32 percent of consumer expenditures. Since residential electric service is essentially universal in the U.S., and natural gas service is not, for space heating particularly, that the gas service percentage is one-quarter the electric service percentage only means that the gas service percentage makes more sense in the energy affordability conversation when the two percentages are aggregated.
So, in 2024, electric and gas service accounted for 1.60 percent of consumer expenditures. As a fraction, that’s one dollar of every sixty-two-and-a-half dollars of expenditures that went to pay electric and gas bills, averaged nationally.
This energy bill percent in 2024 was the lowest percentage over the last ten years, from 2015 through 2024. For example, in 2015 electric and gas bills were 1.83 percent of consumer expenditures. And they were at least 1.70 percent in six of the last ten years. See Figure 1.
This means that averaged nationally, energy was generally more affordable for U.S. households in 2024 than anytime in recent memory. Of course, for individual households, energy affordability varies immensely. Many of the one-hundred-thirty-four-million households are struggling to make ends meet, including paying their electric and gas bills on time.
Affordability by the Numbers articles at fortnightly.com:
