I appreciate this graph as a (very partial) rejoinder to the inflation truthers.
I could believe that there is some modest measurement error in how we calculate inflation, but, picking relatively arbitrary dates that I happen to remember, the idea that 2000-2025 inflation was double the reported numbers doesn't pass the sniff test.
I don't have a horse in this race outside of general skepticism of official numbers (though inflation is particularly difficult to fake since you can literally just buy/assess the basket of goods the figures represent yourself), but I don't think this is the rejoinder you're looking for. Eggs went from 0.975 to 3.587, a 3.68x increase. CPI went from 1.69 to 3.23, a 1.9x increase. So the price of eggs increased 93% more than nominal inflation.
What dates? 2000 August–2025 August gives 3.18%/year for the consumer index and 7.12%/year for egg prices. Even if you assume egg prices will come down to $3/dozen, it's still 6.24%/year.
$6.20 for a dozen eggs still sounds like a good deal. Think about the amount of work to get those onto a refrigerated shelf in the supermarket. It's amazing.
No it isn't. A dozen can fly by for a single person or a small family. You'll probably need at least two dozen a week. Hell, a lot of recipes ask for 2-3. So now you're looking at almost $50 a month just for eggs (2dozen/week @6.20.)
That might be easy for you when you're working at Microsoft and making $500,000 a year, but that's a significant amount of money for a lot of people in the United States. And eggs aren't some fancy item. They're eggs.
Hmmm ... 12 eggs in India is currently only around $1 (it used to be around 1/2 that price a year or 2 ago) ... Those packed and sold by billion dollar companies, retail from around US $2 though ...
The retail price of eggs was a significant talking point in the campaign for the last US presidential election (which I'd forgotten until I saw this post).
As someone who keeps backyard chickens and recently got a new flock, I will say anecdotally this spike was observed even in livestock.
In March 2025, I tried to order baby chicks to replace some of my aging flock. Not only was every hatchery sold out, but going in person to farm stores meant waiting in lines on the days shipments were received and dealing with rationing (3 chicks per person, etc).
I opted to order chicks for the fall instead of doing a normal spring brooding and luckily the weather cooperated, but as is normal I ordered some extra chicks as padding. The extras I have now been able to sell locally at a premium, covering my entire cost.
Let me just add I don't think backyard eggs are cheaper, even at the height of price spike, because when externalities like feed and enclosure are calculated the resulting product won't have the economies of scale. But I think many people decided they wanted a steady supply after eggs became hard to come by. I personally keep chickens for reasons besides eggs but I am still happy that more folks are keeping chickens.
The other thing about chickens is they are pretty easy to care for. If you feed them grain and provide them decent shelter and clean their cage out every week or two, they will be perfectly happy.
Your phrasing of the last sentence caught my interest. Is the other reason fresh chicken meat, or is there another benefit to keeping them that I can't think of?
As others have already said, the reason is mainly to cycle yard and food waste, as well as some garden tasks (they can be used to prepare beds as well as cut my lawn). I also plan to raise black soldier fly eventually.
Not to be that guy, but feed/enclosure are direct costs.
Externalities are costs/benefits to someone uninvolved with the chicken/egg transaction (noise or free insect control affecting your neighbor are negative and positive cases).
> Let me just add I don't think backyard eggs are cheaper, even at the height of price spike, because when externalities like feed and enclosure are calculated the resulting product won't have the economies of scale
The math checks out if:
1) You build your coop and enclosure basically out of junk or otherwise for near-free (good luck with the, ah, “spouse test” on that);
2) You lean heavily on kitchen waste for food;
3) You place no value on the time spent on anything chicken-related;
4) You butcher and eat each chicken after ~3 years when their rate of laying drops off (you stop wasting food and space on an unproductive layer, and gain “free” chicken meat);
5) You raise more than you eat and sell the excess (ten chickens aren’t much more effort than four chickens, and the extra may cover feed and replacement costs for the flock);
So yeah it doesn’t really work out, just buy $5-$8/dozen backyard chicken eggs from someone else who’s bad at math or has different priorities (loves the smell of chicken shit, maybe?), you’ll come out ahead. Or get them from the grocery store if you don’t care much about the chickens’ diet and conditions.
huh, maybe I got in just before that. I ordered 1/31/2025, ship date 3/25/2025 from Hoovers in Iowa (even though I'm in NH they are very reliable), and there was plenty of stock.
Eggs and milk used to be staples people “needed” they were just few alternatives in the food market. Now they are basically luxury goods with staples being things like chicken nuggets and colas.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad either way, but if the price of eggs were increased 1000% it wouldn’t effect people’s quality of life as much as a 1% increase in the cost of education or healthcare.
This chart seems off, for some reason. It shows the average price for a dozen eggs as hitting $1.20 in 2019. I don't remember ever paying that little in my adult life for eggs, and I've lived in small towns during that time frame too.
Also this should be noted: Large white, Grade A chicken eggs, sold in a carton of a dozen. Includes organic, non-organic, cage free, free range, and traditional.
Egg options in grocery stores today are way more diverse than they were when I was a kid in the 90s. Organic eggs were rare. None were cage free. Today's options include soy-free, cage free, free range, etc. I pay a premium for soy free, free range eggs. This wasn't even an option in 1997 or 2005 or most of the years listed here.
The only significance I can see is in the amplitude of the fluctuations. Which I intuitively attribute to massive concentration of both production sites and ownership of businesses.
I have been haphazardly tracking my grocery prices at Aldi since 2022. My lowest price was $1.12 per dozen in Nov 2023, my highest was $5.97 in Feb 2025. Last recorded price in September was $2.71.
So, the eggs roughly follow the CPI, except during spikes in avian bird flu? 2015, 2022, and 2025 were peak years for bird flu in avian populations.
Since 2022 and 2025 are close together, and the latter very recent (the flu outbreak peaked in early 2025, not today)... it's not even suprising to see the non-spike prices of 2023-2024 and late 2025 elevated. Chickens are fungible, but the manufacturing method still has a latency to it.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 34.4 ms ] threadI could believe that there is some modest measurement error in how we calculate inflation, but, picking relatively arbitrary dates that I happen to remember, the idea that 2000-2025 inflation was double the reported numbers doesn't pass the sniff test.
That might be easy for you when you're working at Microsoft and making $500,000 a year, but that's a significant amount of money for a lot of people in the United States. And eggs aren't some fancy item. They're eggs.
"It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost?"
I fail to see any significance of this one chart.
In March 2025, I tried to order baby chicks to replace some of my aging flock. Not only was every hatchery sold out, but going in person to farm stores meant waiting in lines on the days shipments were received and dealing with rationing (3 chicks per person, etc).
I opted to order chicks for the fall instead of doing a normal spring brooding and luckily the weather cooperated, but as is normal I ordered some extra chicks as padding. The extras I have now been able to sell locally at a premium, covering my entire cost.
Let me just add I don't think backyard eggs are cheaper, even at the height of price spike, because when externalities like feed and enclosure are calculated the resulting product won't have the economies of scale. But I think many people decided they wanted a steady supply after eggs became hard to come by. I personally keep chickens for reasons besides eggs but I am still happy that more folks are keeping chickens.
Externalities are costs/benefits to someone uninvolved with the chicken/egg transaction (noise or free insect control affecting your neighbor are negative and positive cases).
One of my huskies got out and did $70-80 worth of damage to my neighbor's flock: two laying hens.
The math checks out if:
1) You build your coop and enclosure basically out of junk or otherwise for near-free (good luck with the, ah, “spouse test” on that);
2) You lean heavily on kitchen waste for food;
3) You place no value on the time spent on anything chicken-related;
4) You butcher and eat each chicken after ~3 years when their rate of laying drops off (you stop wasting food and space on an unproductive layer, and gain “free” chicken meat);
5) You raise more than you eat and sell the excess (ten chickens aren’t much more effort than four chickens, and the extra may cover feed and replacement costs for the flock);
So yeah it doesn’t really work out, just buy $5-$8/dozen backyard chicken eggs from someone else who’s bad at math or has different priorities (loves the smell of chicken shit, maybe?), you’ll come out ahead. Or get them from the grocery store if you don’t care much about the chickens’ diet and conditions.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad either way, but if the price of eggs were increased 1000% it wouldn’t effect people’s quality of life as much as a 1% increase in the cost of education or healthcare.
Also this should be noted: Large white, Grade A chicken eggs, sold in a carton of a dozen. Includes organic, non-organic, cage free, free range, and traditional.
Egg options in grocery stores today are way more diverse than they were when I was a kid in the 90s. Organic eggs were rare. None were cage free. Today's options include soy-free, cage free, free range, etc. I pay a premium for soy free, free range eggs. This wasn't even an option in 1997 or 2005 or most of the years listed here.
https://aldi-prices.lawruk.com/
Since 2022 and 2025 are close together, and the latter very recent (the flu outbreak peaked in early 2025, not today)... it's not even suprising to see the non-spike prices of 2023-2024 and late 2025 elevated. Chickens are fungible, but the manufacturing method still has a latency to it.