Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade is the parade many people think of immediately because it has strong associations with Thanksgiving Day since the 1920's.

It its also a great event to look at for costs and how costs have changed over the years.  One event that caused an increase of costs was 9/11 because it required all parades have additional police protection.

Lets look at the cost of putting the parade on in 2016.

The parade is 2.5 miles long and takes 3 hours to complete.  The total cost of the parade in 2016 ran between 10.4 and 12. 3 million with an additional 2 millions for costumes, and the property taxes associated with the parade ran another $139,000.

The breakdown of the main amount is as follows:
1. Logistics and coordinations - $1.5 to $3.4 million.  This is the cost of workers, parade supplies, and helium.  Even though the parade is a once a year event, it employs 26 full time workers, and 10 to 15 part time workers.  These workers take a budgeted $1.3 million for salaries.

2. The balloon floats require 50 to 90 people for each one to wrangle them down the parade route.  The balloons also need between 300,000 and 700,000 cubic feet of helium.  The minimum cost is $510,000 to fill the smaller balloons.

3.  It costs $90,000 to sponsor a returning balloon or $190,000 for a new balloon.  If one wants to build a new float, it can cost a lot because the price covers the cost of building a new float over four to nine months and can cost for basic expenses between $30,000 and $100,000.

4.  There is also the cost of hiring police officers, drug sniffing dogs, and rooftop snipers that has to be added in.  No one is sure how much it runs but it is at least $200,000 in overtime costs and that does not include the regular costs.  It is thought the full cost for the police presence is several million.

It is hard to get exact figures because Macy's is extremely tight lipped about how much they spend.  It is hard to even find costs from any of the earlier parades other than 2016 or so.

There are some infographics which contain this information such as the one here or here.  This site has a graphic showing the number of balloons by decade while this site has graphics that compare warmest with coolest days and one on the number of new floats between 2001 and 2016.  This graph shows the breakdown of viewers by percent for the 18 to 64 age groups.

Keep your eyes open here on Friday because I'll be providing links and information on Black Friday Sales.  I hope the information I gave is enough for students to create their own infographics or even graphs.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a wonderful day.