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What percentage of American adults couldn't pay an energy bill in full in the last two months?

10.6% of American adults couldn't pay an energy bill in full in the last two months - about 11 in every 100, or 1 in 10. That is the figure published by the Household Pulse Survey for 2026.

0 in 100100 in 100
10.6

Where this number comes from

Survey
Household Pulse Survey
What it measured
HTOPS HPS 2607 (collected July 15 – August 3, 2026), item ENERGY_BILL (“In the LAST 2 MONTHS, was your household unable to pay an energy bill or unable to pay the full bill amount?”), counting responses 1=Yes, as a share of adults who answered (7.8% did not). Computed from the Census Bureau's public-use microdata with the person weight PWEIGHT; the standard error uses its 80 successive-difference replicate weights (4/80 · Σ of squared deviations). The counts and standard errors behind it reproduce the published table housing1. Census labels these estimates experimental; unweighted n = 11,963.
Population
U.S. adults aged 18 and over
Year
2026
95% confidence interval
8.48% to 12.72% (derived from the published standard error)

Work of the U.S. federal government - public domain. See the source data

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