Men’s shoe prices have risen faster than women’s since 1978. From the 1978 annual average to the 2025 annual average, the men’s shoe CPI from the Bureau of Labor Statistics climbed 97.3%, or 1.46% a year, while the women’s shoe CPI climbed 62.6%, or 1.04% a year. Both stayed far below the 393.5% rise in all consumer prices. This page sets the two series side by side and explains what the comparison can and cannot show.
First, a warning about the index numbers
In September 2026 the men’s index was 161.769 and the women’s index was 142.099. It is tempting to read this as “men’s shoes cost more.” The numbers do not say that.
Per the BLS CPI FAQ, most CPI series are scaled so the 1982-84 average equals 100, and a reading of 110 signals prices 10% above that period. So every series starts from 100 in its own base years. A men’s index of 161.769 therefore says men’s shoes cost about 61.8% more than men’s shoes did in 1982 to 1984. A women’s index of 142.099 says women’s shoes cost about 42.1% more than women’s shoes did then. Neither number is a dollar amount, and neither compares a man’s pair with a woman’s pair.
The gap between the two numbers tells you only that men’s shoe prices have climbed more since the base period. It does not tell you which pair is cheaper at the register.
For a dollar view, the closest BLS figure is spending, not price. A BLS Economics Daily article from February 5, 2025 reports that households spent an average of $208 on women’s footwear and $147 on men’s in 2023. That is total spending per household, which mixes price with how many pairs people buy and what kind, so it is not a price comparison either.
The long run
| Men’s shoes | Women’s shoes | |
|---|---|---|
| 1978 to 2025, total | +97.3% | +62.6% |
| Per year | 1.46% | 1.04% |
| 2000 to 2025, total | +16.9% | +11.1% |
| 2019 to 2025, total | +7.9% | +7.0% |
| 12 months to September 2026 | +4.5% | +3.9% |
If you divide the men’s index by the women’s index, the ratio rose from 0.94 in 1978 to 1.14 in 2025. That means men’s shoe prices gained about 21% on women’s over 47 years. Since the two indexes are not prices, the ratio itself has no dollar meaning. Only its change does.
Year to year, the two series did not move in lockstep. Across the 47 yearly changes since 1979, men’s shoe prices rose more than women’s in 28 years and less in 19. The widest gap in men’s favor came in 1986, when the men’s yearly change beat the women’s by 4.3 percentage points. The widest gap the other way came in 2001, when women’s shoes beat men’s by 4.0 points. The men vs. women page charts every year.
Biggest years up and down
Both series had their sharpest rises at the start of the record, during the high inflation of 1979 to 1981.
Men’s shoes
- Largest yearly rises: 1979 +9.7%, 1980 +7.6%, 1988 +5.9%
- Largest yearly falls: 2003 −4.2%, 2001 −3.0%, 2007 −2.1%
Women’s shoes
- Largest yearly rises: 1979 +6.3%, 1980 +6.1%, 1981 +5.0%
- Largest yearly falls: 2020 −2.9%, 1986 −2.4%, 2014 −1.8%
The years with big drops differ. Men’s shoes saw their worst declines in the early and mid 2000s, while the women’s worst year was 2020. The men’s index fell 1.8% in 2020, so both groups got cheaper that year, but the women’s fall was larger. Since 2021 the pattern has evened out, with men’s up 4.7% in 2021 and women’s up 4.9% in 2022 as the two largest recent jumps. The men’s shoe page lists every annual average.
Seasonal swings are larger for women’s shoes
Within a year, prices of women’s shoes move more. To measure this we compare each month of the unadjusted index with a centered 12-month moving average of that same index, which stands in for the trend. We average the gap for each calendar month over 2015 to 2025 and center the twelve results on zero. Months whose averaging window touches the missing October 2025 are left out. BLS publishes its own seasonally adjusted series, built with X-13ARIMA-SEATS software and refreshed every February, but we do not rely on it here because in some years the adjusted shoe series match the unadjusted ones.
| Low month | High month | Spread | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men’s shoes | December, −1.83% | February, +0.78% | 2.61 points |
| Women’s shoes | January, −1.89% | October, +1.55% | 3.44 points |
The women’s spread is about 1.3 times the men’s, and the timing differs. Men’s shoes dip hardest in December and peak in February, with September (+0.67%) close behind, while women’s shoes bottom out in January and peak in September and October. Women’s shoes also climb steeply after the winter low. In our data the women’s index rose 3.41% on average from January to March across 2015 to 2025. Men’s shoes show a smaller pattern, falling 1.70% on average from November to December and rising 0.81% from August to September. Because October 2025 was never collected, the seasonal figures for April through December rest on 10 years and January through March on 11. The cheapest month page shows all twelve months for each group.
At the factory gate the gap is wider
The producer price index, the BLS gauge of what U.S. makers charge when goods leave the plant, has separate series for men’s footwear excluding athletic and women’s footwear excluding athletic. Both start at 100 in December 1993.
| PPI series | 1994 to 2025 | 2000 to 2025 | 12 months to Sep. 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men’s, excl. athletic | +111.7% | +94.8% | +3.7% |
| Women’s, excl. athletic | +55.6% | +48.7% | +1.2% |
At U.S. factories, men’s non-athletic shoe prices more than doubled from 1994 to 2025, while women’s rose by about half. Over the same years, the consumer indexes rose far less, 13.6% for men’s shoes and 10.4% for women’s. The direction matches: men’s prices rose more at both stages. The size does not. The factory series cover only U.S.-made shoes, and the consumer index covers what stores sell, wherever it was made, so the two measure different shoes. Month-by-month PPI values sit under factory prices for men’s shoes and, separately, factory prices for women’s shoes.
How to use the comparison
The fair questions the data can answer are about change. Did men’s shoes get more expensive faster than women’s? Yes, over the full record and in most years. Which group swings more within the year? Women’s, by about 0.8 of a point peak to trough. Which group saw steeper factory price increases? Men’s non-athletic shoes.
The question the data cannot answer is which pair costs more in dollars today. For that you would need prices of specific shoes, and the CPI, by design, tracks the change in prices of sampled items rather than their level.