TRACKING CHANGES AND TRENDS IN U.S. FOOD PRICES

This dashboard reports average food prices and their trends over time for various food items across three perspectives. The first tab reflects “Average U.S. food prices” for various food items since 2010. Food item prices are per pound, ounce, or pack size. The second tab shows “Inflation-adjusted average U.S. food prices.” All data in the second tab reflect current prices using the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI). The third tab shows the “Time price” of food items, for example, how many pounds or ounces of a food item that can be bought with one hour of work. In addition, the user can see the average hourly earnings over time in the bottom panel.

HOW TO USE THE DASHBOARD

Select one (or multiple) item categories in the ‘Category’ section for customized information. You can also select the start month-year and the end month-year in the ‘Month/Year’ section which will change all the plots.

VARIABLE DEFINITIONS

Inflation-Adjusted Price: Divide the Food Price by the CPI Ratio using the latest CPI release.

CPI Ratio: A ratio for adjusting inflation. Divide the CPI value in each selected time range by value in the most recent time range (recent being the latest CPI release).

Time Price: Divide the price of each item by the average hourly earnings.

DATA SOURCES

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI data from 2010 to current month-year (subject to CPI data release and data availability).

DASHBOARD AUTHORS

Annapurni Subramaniam, Ahmad Wahdat, Jayson Lusk