Depending on where you eat, prices were up or down in April.
Six CPI Food Items Percent Changes
- Meat, Fish, Poultry, Eggs: -1.6%
- Cereals and Bakery: -0.5%
- Fruits and Vegetables: -0.4%
- Dairy: -0.2%
- Food and Beverage: -0.1%
- Nonalcoholic Beverages: +0.4%
Despite mostly big declines, food and beverages were only down 0.1 percent. That category includes food at home and food away from home.
Three Major CPI Food Categories Month-Over-Month
Three Major CPI Food Items Percent Changes
- At Home: -0.44%
- Aggregate: -0.07%
- Away from Home: +0.44%
The BLS rounds numbers to a single decimal point, I plotted two decimal places.
The BLS weights food at home at 8.051 percent of the CPI and food away from home at 5.629 percent of the CPI.
The former is seasonally adjusted and the latter isn’t. And the percentage weights for everything, not just food, change every month.
Spotlight Eggs
Trump Egg Comments
April 18,2015: Trump on egg costs: ‘If anything, the prices are getting too low’
Trump praised Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins for doing a “great” job and then asserted that egg prices are “down 87 percent, but nobody talks about that.”
“You can have all the eggs. You watch, we have too many eggs. In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low. So I just want to let you know that the prices are down.”
“They said you won’t have eggs for Easter,” the president added. “Well, you can have all the eggs you want.”
Retail Price per Dozen Large Grade A Eggs Detail
The price of eggs is up $0.17 from January to $5.12 in April.
The price of eggs in April is down $1.11 from $6.23 in March to $5.12 in April.
If you wish to give Trump credit for the decline, then credit him for a drop 17.8 percent, not 87 percent.
Did Trump mean 87 cents instead of 87 percent?
Regardless, it is quite funny to hear Trump’s claim, “In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low.”
CPI Food at Home vs Away from Home Year-Over-Year
Year-Over-Year Food Details
- Food Away from Home: 3.9%
- Food and Beverage: 2.7%
- Food at Home: 2.0%
Your results may vary.
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