US secondhand/thrift store market

As the American thrift store market has grown, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities have also increased, a correlation that suggests either that vintage shopping drives people to drink or that both trends are measuring the same post-pandemic economy doing two things nobody expected simultaneously. The coefficient is 0.871 across eleven years, during which Americans bought more secondhand clothing and drove drunk more often, and the chart connected these activities with the confidence of a trend line that has never been to a thrift store or a bar, let alone both on the same evening.

The secondhand market grew from about 16 billion to over 45 billion dollars between 2012 and 2022, driven by sustainability culture, Gen Z's embrace of thrifting, and the Depop/ThredUp digital resale revolution. Impaired driving fatalities grew from about 10,300 to over 13,300 during the same period, reversing years of progress as pandemic-era behaviors (heavier drinking, emptier roads encouraging faster driving) persisted. Both trends spiked during and after the pandemic for different reasons: thrift stores boomed because consumers prioritized value and sustainability, while drunk driving surged because alcohol consumption increased and driving habits worsened. The shared accelerant is the pandemic, not the shopping.

Eleven years of thrift stores and drunk driving growing together is a post-pandemic correlation—two trends that were moving modestly upward before 2020 and then accelerated for entirely different reasons. The thrifting is conscious, the drinking is not, and the pandemic amplified both without connecting them. The vintage jacket is sustainable. The driving is not.