Meal option A: Mashed potatoes with butter, a side of oranges and bananas, cookies and cake for dessert and a glass of wine.
Meal option B: A beef roast, bacon, eggs, a side of canned vegetables and whole milk to drink.
What’s the difference – besides some questionable dinner pairings? Inflation.
Items in Meal A are up 1.9% in price compared to November 2019. The Meal B foods are up 20.9% over the two years.
Prices for all goods and services are up an average of 6.8% in the past 12 months, according to the Consumer Price Index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But not all items are affected the same. In fact, some items are cheaper than they were pre-pandemic.
Food and energy are among the categories with the largest increases. But as evidenced by the dinner comparison above, there’s lots of variation in the subcategories – most meats are pricier while citrus fruits have stayed steadier.
Here’s a look at how prices have changed for 13 notable items.
(Can’t see the chart? Click here.)
Inflation is a product of supply and demand. When there’s less supply or extra demand, prices go up.
In 2021′s case, it was both.
COVID-19 is disrupting supply chains, making it harder, costlier and slower to get the finished product on the shelf. And because many people have more money – from saving in 2020, getting a raise at work or via lower interest rates – demand is up, too.
“I think there’s a good chance inflation will drift a little bit downward (in 2022),” said Michigan State University economics professor Charles Ballard. “It might take years to put all the pieces back together.”
Many factors go into changing prices for each item. Airline fares, for example, are cheaper than in 2019 partly because of a lack of demand for leisure travel, plus a reduction of international travel and business travel. At the same time, energy and staff are more expensive than ever.
After airline fares plummeted 17% in price in 2020, they dipped another 3.7% in the past 12 months. And it’s not the only item to decrease in price.
So what’s cheaper and what’s more expensive? Check out our searchable database below, which includes 377 goods, services and categories.
(Can’t see the database? Click here.)
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December 31, 2021 at 08:30PM
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Bacon? Beer? Bread? Search our inflation database to see how prices changed for 377 items in 2021 - MLive.com
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