US Egg Prices Up 70% From a Year Ago

Facts

• Despite hitting a wholesale peak in December and then subsequently declining, US consumer egg prices continued to go up in January, rising 8.5% month-over-month and 70.1% from a year prior, according to data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Tuesday.¹
• Though other grocery items also saw large price jumps, eggs were hit particularly hard due to a deadly avian flu affecting the national supply as well as higher production and transportation costs. Some producers have also been accused of price gouging as their profits have risen amid the crisis.²
• Among the other year-over-year price jumps were butter rising 26.3%, flour at 20.4%, bread jumping 14.9%, sugar up 13.5%, and milk, chicken, and fruits and vegetables rising 11%, 10.5%, and 7.2%, respectively. However, bacon did drop 3.9%, and uncooked beef steaks fell 3%.³
• Coming in higher than the expected 6.2%, the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) - which tracks all everyday goods and services - rose 6.4% from a year prior and 0.5% from December. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, hiked 5.6% year-over-year.⁴
• In addition to disease, food prices are said to be impacted by climate change and international crises like the war in Ukraine, which has affected the global supply chain. The government has tried to stem overall inflation by hiking interest rates, though it has seen little progress on food prices so far.¹
• Housing and energy costs, too, have remained high, with the price of a gallon of gas jumping 30¢ in January and the cost of housing rising 7.9% from the same month a year ago. This comes as the market is pricing in a 91% chance of another 0.25% interest rate hike next month.⁴

Sources: ¹CBS, ²Wsvn, ³CNN and ⁴New York Post.

Narratives

• Republican narrative, as provided by Daily wire. By not waiting for the CPI numbers to come out, or at least talking to average Americans, Biden spoke too soon at his State of the Union address when he said that 'inflation is coming down.' Food, energy, and housing prices — the economic trends regular people care about most — are destroying the budgets of the very same people the president is gaslighting into supporting him. The government's predictions, and therefore its policies, are having the opposite effect to what was promised.
• Democratic narrative, as provided by Forbes. One's reaction to this report depends on the statistical model they use. As Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has mentioned and accounted for, housing makes up the bulk of inflation, which skews the data in and of itself. Likewise, the CPI calculation summarizes average pricing from the past six months, but when compared to other industry analyses that look at more recent data, inflation is still going down, even more than it appears when adjusting for housing costs.

Predictions