How many trick-or-treaters do you expect to come to your door this Halloween?

That was a topic of discussion around The Salt Lake Tribune newsroom this week, and, for many of us, the answer was “not many.” Where I am in Salt Lake City, I’ve recently been able to count the number of Halloween visitors on one hand, and it sounds like many Tribune employees, even those who live elsewhere around the valley, have experienced similar fall-offs.

This led to the natural follow-up question: Why?

Sure, we recognize that there just are fewer children in Utah than there used to be, especially in Salt Lake City. But does that explain it all? Or, more worryingly…

Is the concept of trick-or-treating dying?

It certainly seems like parents feel less comfortable about neighborhood safety than they used to — does that mean they prevent their kids from knocking on the doors of strangers? Has “trunk or treat,” where kids grab candy out of a collection of car trunks all parked in one convenient location, pushed trick-or-treating to become a relic of an age gone by? Many staffers felt either, or both, explanations were plausible.

So I decided to try to find out. I’ve taken three approaches: looking at surveys over the decades, examining October candy sales and peeking at Google search data. Without a trick-or-treating census, which obviously doesn’t exist (but how fun if it did?), looking at multiple related indicators is probably the best we can do. Here’s what I found:

Self-reported surveys

Americans have been asked about their trick-or-treating habits in a variety of surveys over the years. The trouble, though, is that the surveys differed in how they asked about trick-or-treating.

The surveys variably asked about children under 12, 15, 17 or 18. They sometimes asked whether parents planned to go trick-or-treating, others asked about general trick-or-treating habits, and another asked if children actually had gone trick-or treating. And of course, the phrasing of the questions differed as well.

Nevertheless, it’s useful information. Here are the surveys I was able to find:

I don’t think the data here reflects a significant downturn. In 1985, 60% of parents of children under 15 said their children were going trick-or-treating, and in 2025, 63% of parents of children under 18 said their kids were going. There have been higher and lower estimates — the 40% of respondents in 2021 who said they’d visit other houses was a low mark, but that happened during the pandemic, when you might naturally expect a decline. But we only have one survey since 2021 that re-establishes around the 60% benchmark.

Candy sales figures

The National Retail Federation surveys people about their Halloween purchasing habits, like whether they plan to buy greeting cards, decorations, costumes, and, yes, candy.

It turns out that the vast majority of Americans do buy candy at Halloween: 96%. And this number simply hasn’t changed much over time: it was also 96% in 2010, and the lowest it has fallen in the past 15 years was 94%, in 2015.

You famously can’t get 95% of Americans to agree on anything in a survey, but “Will you buy Halloween candy?” is apparently the lone exception.

In some, but not all, of the National Retail Federation’s annual Halloween news releases, the organization also projected how much money people shell out for candy. And as you’d expect, Americans spend more on candy at Halloween than they did 10 years ago:

But if you adjust for candy inflation — and we can actually do that, given the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ price index for candy and chewing gum — Halloween candy spending is relatively flat over the past decade.

By the way, candy inflation is brutal. From September 2015 to September 2025, grocery prices increased 29.8%, per federal data. Candy and gum prices increased much more — 45%.

So I don’t think the candy sales data reflect a significant downtrend in trick-or-treating, either. Even with skyrocketing prices, Americans are buying sweets at about the same rates.

Google Trends data

I also wanted to find a way to get at the “trunk-or-treating” share. Unlike for regular trick-or-treating, I couldn’t find many surveys on the subject, so I instead turned to Google Trends data to see what people were searching for in both Utah and the U.S. generally.

I decided to compare searches for “trick-or-treat” vs. “trunk-or-treat” (looking at all tenses of the phrase, and with or without hyphens, for the sticklers). And since 2010, trunk-or-treat searches have grown significantly. Here in Utah, in fact, they’re approaching those of searches for trick-or-treating.

Now, that actually makes some sense to me: a trunk-or-treat is an event you may be able to find information about online, where a trick-or-treating session would traditionally be done impromptu in your own neighborhood. You may not need to search for the latter.

And this data gives credence to my personal trick-or-treating hypothesis: kids have not stopped trick-or-treating fully, but instead have tried to optimize their candy-gathering adventures.

Here’s my personal anecdote on the subject: last year, I was invited to two parties on Halloween night, both in the hours where trick-or-treating would be expected. Luckily, they were close, less than a mile apart, but are separated somewhat by Red Butte Creek.

One was in the historic Gilmer Park neighborhood. These are generally nicer, older houses, but nothing too crazy. Halloween decorations were relatively sparse.

The other party, though, was in the Yalecrest neighborhood — these houses tend to be larger and have higher values than those in Gilmer Park. Ghosts and webs in front yards were much more common on this street.

The Gilmer Park home saw just two kids knock all night.

But Yalecrest? There was a line out the door to the street. Sidewalks were packed, and it felt like a real celebration. I’ve never seen anything like it, even back when I was a kid. Sometimes, five groups of kids waited in line, all having heard tales of king-size candy bars on offer in the neighborhood. Sure enough, they were right.

Surely not all of these kids lived in Yalecrest. But they (or their parents) decided to go where the candy was most optimal, and picked one of Salt Lake City’s most expensive neighborhoods. They were rewarded.

My anecdote is not data — but together with the data we do have, I think we have a pretty compelling picture of kids’ Halloween activities: Trick-or-treating is still being done, in a variety of forms, and candy is still being purchased.

It’s just not quite the same as it was 20 years ago.