Halloween 2012 By The Numbers

The holiday season is definitely a costly one, with all of its presents and enormous meals. However, Halloween is giving Thanksgiving and Christmas a run for their money with its own astounding statistics. 

Between costumes, candy, hosting, and partying, Americans are spending at a crazy rate for Halloween — The U.S. Census Bureau stated that an estimated $8 billion will be spent on the spooky holiday this year. In addition, Pronto.com rounded up a few statistics from the National Retail Foundation as well as other sources to bring together a detailed look into Halloween Freaky-nomics!

Before we break into the details of it all, can you guess where the bulk of the money is being spent? Candy? Costumes? Pumpkins?

Take a guess and then look through these stats about Halloween 2012.

115 million: Number of occupied housing units across the nation in 2011 — that's a ton of potential stops for trick-or-treaters.

41 million: The estimated number of potential trick-or-treaters in 2011 

$113 million: Value of pumpkins harvested from the top six pumpkin-producing states — Illinois, California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — in 2011. 

9 billion: The number of kernels of candy corn that are manufactured for Halloween each year 

$2 billion: How much Americans spend on candy at Halloween, which makes up 8 percent of the annual U.S. candy sales 

900 million: The number of pounds of pumpkins that are produced in the U.S. for Halloween 

36 percent more adults are hosting or going to Halloween bashes than six years ago