What Cost More: The Chicken Or The Egg?

Not sure, but eggs are getting expensive again:

Supermarket prices are no longer skyrocketing – except, of course, if you’re buying eggs.

Egg prices spiked by 28.1% in August from 12 months ago, easily the biggest increase out of any food item tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The sticker shock in the egg aisle comes even as overall grocery prices are barely budging (up less than 1% in August from last year) and inflation cools across the US economy.

The main culprit for rising egg prices is a familiar one: bird flu.

Birds are getting sick, and that means fewer eggs and higher prices at the grocery store.

“Bird flu is the number one reason for higher prices, absolutely,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst and editor of SuperMarketGuru.com.

[SNIP]

Still, the current BLS average of $3.20 per dozen eggs remains high. Before Covid-19, eggs never hit $3 per dozen, according to BLS data going back to 1980.

Now Americans are paying nearly twice as much for eggs as before the pandemic. According to market intelligence platform Datasembly, the average price of eggs has surged 83% since October 2019.