Costco annual revenue

Between 2010 and 2021, Costco's annual revenue grew from $77 billion to $192 billion, and American deaths from falling out of bed tracked upward with an r of 0.9676. The most natural inference is that Costco's supersized beds — sold in bulk, naturally — are both higher off the ground and statistically more fatal, but this hypothesis has not been peer-reviewed. A darker reading: Costco sells such enormous quantities of everything that some actuarial fraction of its customers will eventually do everything, including falling out of bed fatally. It's the price of scale. Every warehouse has its shadow.

Both trends are driven primarily by the aging of the US population. Costco's revenue growth reflects its appeal to affluent older consumers with high discretionary spending and the company's consistent store expansion and membership growth from 598 warehouse locations in 2010 to 828 by 2021. Deaths from falling out of bed, which account for around 400-700 fatalities annually, disproportionately affect elderly individuals and increase as the over-65 demographic grows. Both metrics are also straightforward upward trends across 12 years in a growing economy, which ensures their correlation without requiring any shared causal thread beyond the passage of time and demographic aging.

When a single demographic force — in this case, an aging population with more money and more fragile bones — drives two metrics simultaneously, the correlation is technically real and practically meaningless as a causal statement. The data is a mirror: it reflects the aging of America, refracted through a warehouse retailer and a bedroom floor.