Price of shoes

The Producer Price Index for Footwear manufactures is influenced by macroeconomic factors, including consumer demand and the price of raw materials and substitutes. Demand for shoes, meanwhile, moves with per capita disposable income; for example, consumers limit their footwear purchases to only those they need during times of economic difficulty. In periods of economic booms, consumers spend more freely on footwear and are more attuned to purchase expensive luxury shoes.

Shoe prices nearly stagnated in 2010 as consumers continued to halt purchases of unnecessary items amid economic uncertainty. The slow economic recovery has continued to restrict demand, and turned existing demand toward cheaper, often-imported, shoes. As a result, shoe prices did not rise meaningfully until 2012. Since then, prices have risen gradually as consumers increased spending on discretionary items. However, growth slowed once again in 2020 with prices growing meagerly at 0.8% amid the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic which hurt demand for these products in response to the increased mandates at the time which hampered a lot of activities such as travel and commuting especially as offices and schools turned to a remote policy in the time which discouraged the need for newer shoes among consumers since they mostly stayed indoors in this period. Although, because per capita disposable income remained elevated in 2020, consumers that had extra income to spare to spend on more items and upgrade their inventories were able to which helped prevent prices from outright declining in the period. The reopening of the economy in 2021 helped spur demand for shoes again especially as travel restrictions were gradually lifted. However, higher rubber and leather prices in the year pushed up shoe prices by 2.6% in the year.

Prices increased at a record rate of 8.0% in 2022 following inflationary pressures and the war in Ukraine which both contributed to production costs rising in the year. As people were venturing outdoors more again following the reopening of the economy, the need for certain apparel like footwear did become more apparent which did help enhance sales of these items for the year. With this playing a role into the economy for these products, these heightened production costs from supply-chain issues facing upstream industries for the year did become more apparent in the year too with producers needing to make a lot more of these products in the year to satisfy a more reopened economy. These various pressures have largely remained present in 2023 with prices going up by 4.9% as this can be attributed to a more enhanced spending economy in the year which did fend off the pressures facing the economy being inflation as consumers have gravitated to engaging and buying a lot more products in the period which kept these pressures in place. These factors have continued to impact the footwear market in 2024, leading to costs rising by 1.8% as pressures persist within the manufacturing sector. In 2025, prices will go by 5.6%, driven by increased manufacturing required to meet consumer demands. Also, tariffs will raise costs. The Trump Administration imposed a 10.0% tariff on Chinese imports in early 2025. This will exacerbate price increases, as the US predominantly relies on imported footwear instead of producing it domestically.