I read in the NYT today that Americans spend "more than 50 billion dollars" on toiletry items a year. I guess that seemed to be a lot because any number in the billions seems huge. At least that was the implication of the particular review I was reading. But the US has a population of 300 million, so that is $166 dollars per person, per year. That's awfully low, less than 50 cents per diem on average, for something that almost everyone uses. Since I'm sure some people spend hundreds of dollars a month on hairspray, etc... the average has to be much more than that.

What does the average person think when reading about the XXX billion dollar a year YYYY industry? A billion dollars is 3.3 dollars per person, right? So an industry of that size is pretty insignificant to the size of the economy as a whole, though it would be highly significant to someone with a major stake in that particular sector.