In the two hundred and thirty-five quarters of Gross Domestic Product data since 1959 in the United States, electric bills in 2017’s third quarter were the second lowest ever, as a percent of total consumer expenditures.
The all-time record low, 1.29 percent, was itself set in the first quarter of 2017. Analysts at Public Utilities Fortnightly magazine made the calculation recently based on third-quarter data from the US Commerce Department. Electricity bills were at 1.31 percent of total customer expenditures. Until the fourth quarter of 2015, electric bills had fallen below 1.40 percent of consumer expenditures only once, in the third quarter of 2004. The US has been on a two-year streak of extraordinarily low electric bills as a percent of consumer expenditures, PUF says. Starting in the fourth quarter of 2015, electric bills in the country generally have been below 1.40 percent in all but one of the eight quarters.