Egg Enjoyers Rejoice As Prices Finally Crashed Over The Last Month
If there's one thing you've nixed from your grocery list over the past year, it's probably eggs. Though eggs are essential to many recipes, egg prices skyrocketed in 2022, leaving consumers to resort to measures that included actually buying chickens to lower their lifetime egg costs.
Grocery prices in general saw quite an uptick alongside inflation, but the avian flu caused egg prices to soar above the rest in terms of percentage growth, rising more than 70% between 2022 and 2023. Although general labor issues affected egg prices as well, the bulk of the rise came from an unexpectedly large avian flu wave that wiped out nearly 51 million birds. With fewer eggs, egg producers had trouble keeping up with demand, resulting in higher prices.
Now, though, consumers are catching a break. After more than a year of continued rise, egg prices have finally seen a substantial dip, dropping by 11% in March.
Egg prices are finally dropping
In April, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its March Consumer Price Index report, and it showed promise. Eggs' index fell by just under 11%, which followed a 7% drop in February. It seems that egg-gate is finally coming to a close.
Brian Moscogiuri, a global egg strategist for egg supplier Eggs Unlimited, told CNBC that the drop in price reflects the lower demand for eggs, as well as egg producers finally recovering from the avian flu. Although there was a rise in demand around Easter, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that has since dropped; egg prices continue to be on the decline.
It's important to note that food prices as a whole are starting to drop, though they're still higher than they should be. In March, grocery prices declined by 0.3%. While that may not sound like much, it's the first month-over-month drop since prices began to rise in September 2020.