Trick-or-treaters, candy, roads and households: A bag full of Halloween data

There may be some more spooky costumes and more trick-or-treaters since last year—but, judging by the numbers, Canadians are not shy about spending spooky amounts of money to make sure they all have enough candy!

With that in mind, let’s take a look at our Halloween-related demography and retail data, as well as numbers on roads and households.

More trick-or-treaters in 2024

Statistics Canada issues population estimates by age on an annual basis. On July 1, 2024, there were 1,873,533 kids aged 0 to 4 years (-1,549 from 2023), 2,155,845 kids aged 5 to 9 years (+33,031) and 2,235,131 kids and teens aged 10 to 14 years (+45,929) living in Canada.

In total, there are 6,264,509 young Canadians in their trick-or-treating years in 2024, up 77,411 (+1.2%) from 6,187,098 in 2023.

Most provinces and territories recorded an uptick in the number of youths, led by Ontario (+31,561), while Newfoundland and Labrador (-184), the Northwest Territories (-239) and Nunavut (-10) recorded small decreases.

October’s candy sales second only to the winter holidays

Millions of kids means lots of Halloween candy to buy! In October 2023, Canadians spent just over $1.8 billion in retail purchases of cookies, confectionery and snack foods. This broad product category includes candy, chewing gum, chips, chocolate bars, marshmallows, mixed nuts, popcorn and pretzels. Yum!

As you might expect, that total was a close second to the nearly $2.1 billion Canadians spent in December, leading into the holiday season.

Trick-or-treating routes and households

In 2022, there were over 1 million kilometres of public road assets across Canada. Urban and suburban trick-or-treaters were likely to travel along much of the 145,783 km of sidewalks; 20,414 km of lanes and alleys; 547,973 km of local roads; 148,516 km of collector roads; and 117,461 km of arterial roads.

Highways (46,828 km) and rural highways (136,681 km) might just be ferrying some rural ghosts and goblins around, so drive safely.

That's a lot of driving and walking options! But how many doors are there to knock on? The 2021 Census of Population counted nearly 15 million private dwellings occupied by their usual residents.

Happy Halloween, Canada!