grocery prices

The U.S. food inflation rate, on the decline since August 2022, shrank to an annualized rate of 2.7 percent at the end of 2023, said the monthly Consumer Price Index report on Thursday. A Purdue survey said Americans’ expectations of food inflation are the lowest in two years, suggesting consumers are more optimistic about prices this year.

Led by lower meat, poultry, fish, and egg prices, the food inflation rate fell to 5.7 percent in June, the lowest annualized figure since October 2021, said the Labor Department on Wednesday.

Grocery prices will rise 6.6 percent this year, with lower beef and pork prices helping to constrain the inflation rate after last year’s 11.4 percent rise, said USDA economists. At the start of the year, the USDA forecast an 8.6 percent increase in prices, but it has lowered its estimate for two months in a row.

Egg prices fell nearly 11 percent during March, contributing to the first decline — 0.3 percent for the month — in grocery price inflation since September 2020, said the Labor Department on Wednesday. The overall food inflation rate, which includes restaurant meals, takeout food, and school cafeterias, was down for the seventh month in a row.

Egg prices at the grocery store were elevated throughout 2022 due to outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) among egg-laying hens, said USDA economists. “Lower-than-usual shell egg inventories near the end of the year, combined with increased demand stemming from the holiday baking season, resulted in several successive weeks of record-high egg prices."

The food inflation rate declined in November for the third month in a row to its lowest level since June, said the Labor Department on Tuesday. Despite the improvement, food prices are 10.6 percent higher than they were a year ago, according to the Consumer Price Index report.

Although the U.S. inflation rate slowed to 8.3 percent for the year ending in April, food continues to cost more and more, said the Labor Department on Wednesday. Grocery prices shot up 10.8 percent in the past year, driven by higher prices for such foods as bacon, up 17.7 percent, chicken, up 16.4 percent, and eggs, up 22.6 percent.

Grocery prices will rise by an average of 5.5 percent this year, the highest inflation rate at the supermarket since 2008, said the Agriculture Department on Monday. The forecast was an abrupt 2 percentage point increase from last month and was spurred by three months of rapid rises in the prices of many foods.

Grocery prices rose by 3.5 percent during 2020, the largest increase since prices rose 4.8 percent in 2011, said the USDA on Monday. Beef led the parade of pandemic price increases, up by 9.6 percent for the year, followed by pork, up 6.3 percent, and poultry, up by 5.6 percent. “Only the …

Lower prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs were the driving factor for a slight decline in grocery prices during August, the second month in a row that supermarket prices were down, said the monthly Consumer Price Index. Despite the decreases, food inflation ran at 4.6 percent in the past 12 months, rising far more rapidly than the overall U.S. rate of 1.3 percent.

Beef prices in the grocery store are 14.2 percent higher than a year ago, part of a broad rise in prices for "food at home," said the Labor Department on Wednesday. While it was the fourth month in a row of surging grocery prices, there were signs that food inflation is easing.

Grocery prices will rise a modest 1.5 percent in 2021, close to the long-term average and half of the larger-than-usual increase expected this year, said the USDA in its first forecast of food inflation in the new year.