Consumer Staples sector valuation
The U.S. consumer staples sector trades at 23.56 times trailing earnings, higher than 88% of its readings since 1979. Its aggregate earnings have grown 3.4% a year over five years and 4.7% a year over ten, the second slowest rate of the eleven sectors.
A high multiple on low growth is usually a warning. This page is about the case that here it is a price for something else.
United States The four headline readings below are for the U.S. consumer staples sector. The same six measures for the global and global ex-U.S. consumer staples sectors are in the table that follows.
| Measure | United States | Global | Global ex-U.S. | U.S. premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trailing P/E | 23.56 | 21.22 | 18.40 | +28% |
| Forward P/E | 21.62 | 19.06 | 16.11 | +34% |
| CAPE | 23.96 | 22.34 | 20.23 | +18% |
| EV/EBITDA | 16.04 | 12.69 | 9.59 | +67% |
| Price to book | 7.01 | — | — | — |
| Dividend yield | 2.40% | — | — | — |
Global covers developed markets, emerging markets and the United States. Global ex-U.S. is the same universe with the United States removed, and still includes both developed and emerging markets. Dividend yield and price to book are published for the U.S. sectors only. Free to reuse with attribution.
Trailing P/E and CAPE, U.S., from 1979. The two lines stay close together throughout: current earnings are 1.02 times their own inflation-adjusted decade average, the second lowest multiple of the eleven sectors.
The same four measures, side by side in each market published. The American premium is modest on earnings and much wider on EV/EBITDA.
| Year | Trailing P/E | CAPE |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 23.08 | 22.98 |
| 2024 | 21.36 | 23.63 |
| 2023 | 20.17 | 22.13 |
| 2022 | 23.65 | 23.69 |
| 2021 | 23.90 | 26.81 |
| 2020 | 21.56 | 25.62 |
| 2019 | 21.66 | 24.92 |
| 2018 | 17.76 | 21.14 |
| 2017 | 21.92 | 25.41 |
| 2016 | 21.59 | 24.38 |
The full monthly history from 1979, the dividend yield and price-to-book series, and the global and global ex-U.S. figures are available to subscribers.
United States, Aug 2026
U.S. sector against its own history
What the multiple is actually buying
A trailing P/E of 23.56 against a median of 18.85 is a real premium, and the growth rate does not explain it. Aggregate earnings compounded at 4.7% a year over ten years and 5.3% over twenty — slow, and consistently slow.
The explanation is in a different statistic. In the 524 months since 1979 in which a year-on-year comparison can be made, aggregate earnings in this sector were lower than a year earlier 18% of the time. The worst twelve-month fall on record is -9.6%, in July 1998 — the mildest of the eleven, and the only one that does not reach double figures.
That is the product. Not growth, and not a bargain: an earnings stream that has never once had a bad year in nearly five decades. Whether that is worth a multiple at the 88th percentile of its own history is a judgement about how much a reader values the absence of a shock, and the number above is what the market currently charges for it.
The multiple carries no signal about next year
In a cyclical sector the trailing P/E moves with the earnings cycle rather than against it: the multiple looks lowest when earnings are at a peak that is about to break.
That effect is absent here. Taking every month since 1979 and sorting by the sector's own trailing P/E: in the cheapest fifth of months, earnings fell over the following twelve months 25% of the time, with a median change of +6.4%. In the dearest fifth the figures are 30% and +5.1%.
Two nearly identical outcomes. In this sector the multiple tells you what you are paying and nothing about what is coming, which is exactly what you would expect where there is no cycle to predict. The opposite case is visible in materials, where the same test produces two completely different answers.
The income is not what it was
The dividend yield is 2.40%, against a median of 2.65% since 2005 and a high of 3.66% in February 2009. It sits at the 15th percentile of its own record.
For a sector bought largely for income, that is the more direct way to read the valuation. The earnings multiple and the yield are two views of the same price, and the yield has the advantage of being a number the holder actually receives.
Where the international comparison breaks down
American consumer staples trade +28% above the rest of the world on trailing earnings — and +67% above on EV/EBITDA.
A gap of that width between the two premiums means the comparison is not measuring the same thing twice. P/E ignores the balance sheet; EV/EBITDA prices it in. The international sector carries more debt relative to earnings, so it looks closer to the American one on equity-only measures than it is on whole-company ones.
Price to book would settle it, and it is published for the U.S. sectors only: 7.01, at the 92nd percentile since 1979. Internationally the comparison has to rest on P/E, forward P/E, CAPE and EV/EBITDA, and the honest reading is that the first three flatter the non-U.S. sector and the fourth does not.
Choosing a measure
No single ratio answers every question about a sector. Each of these pages covers the same eleven sectors — what changes is the question the measure is good at, and how far the coverage reaches.
| Measure | The question it answers | Why that one |
|---|---|---|
| EV/EBITDA | How does one sector compare across markets? | Sits above tax and debt, so it survives crossing borders. The only measure here that makes an international sector comparison sound. |
| P/E and earnings | How fast are a sector’s earnings growing? | Trailing and forward multiples with the earnings behind them, so the multiple and its denominator can be read together. |
| CAPE | Is a sector expensive against its own history? | Averages a decade of real earnings, which smooths the cycle out of the denominator. |
| Price to book | What is the market paying for the assets? | Works where earnings-based measures break down — asset-heavy sectors, and banks in particular. U.S. sectors only. |
| Dividend yield | Which sectors pay, and how much? | Income rather than valuation, but it moves inversely with price and is read alongside the multiples. U.S. sectors only. |
Communication Services · Consumer Discretionary · Energy · Financials · Health Care · Industrials · Technology · Materials · Real Estate · Utilities
All eleven side by side: sector valuations. To compare them on one measure: P/E and earnings · CAPE ratios · EV/EBITDA · Dividend yields · Price to book.
Where this data is used
Some examples. Siblis valuation data appears in peer-reviewed journals, central bank publications and the financial press.
The whole consumer staples history, every trading day
This page publishes ten year-ends and the current reading. The database carries every month back to 1979, for all eleven sectors and every market.
How this is calculated
Every ratio is calculated on the aggregate: the total market capitalisation of the sector's constituents divided by their aggregate earnings, book value or EBITDA, rather than as an average of the constituents' own ratios.
- Trailing P/E — Aggregate normalised net income over the previous twelve months. Major purely accounting gains and losses are removed.
- Forward P/E — Consensus estimates for the next twelve months, aggregated the same way.
- CAPE — Price divided by the average of ten years of inflation-adjusted aggregate earnings.
- Earnings growth — Calculated on aggregate sector earnings, not a per-share figure, so it is unaffected by buybacks. The one-year figure compares two month-ends. Rates over five years and longer compare the average of the twelve months at each end, so that one unusual month at the start does not set the whole rate.
- Coverage — U.S. series from 1979; global and global ex-U.S. from 1997. Dividend yield and price to book are U.S. only, from 2005 and 1979. The universes are comparable as levels but not as history, because they do not span the same period.
- Percentiles — The share of month-ends in that series' own history with a lower reading than the current one.
- Revisions — Figures are point-in-time. If a company later restates its results, the historic reading is left exactly as first published.
Cite this page
Siblis Research. (2026). Consumer Staples sector P/E, CAPE and dividend yield — U.S. and global [Data set]. Retrieved 31 August 2026, from siblisresearch.com/data/consumer-staples-sector-valuation/
@misc{siblis_consumer_staples_sector_valuation,
title={Consumer Staples sector P/E, CAPE and dividend yield — U.S. and global}, author={{Siblis Research}},
year={2026}, url={https://siblisresearch.com/data/consumer-staples-sector-valuation/},
urldate={2026-08-31}} Charts on this page may be reproduced free of charge with attribution to Siblis Research and a link to this page.