Everybody Calm Down About Egg Prices

Rick Newman·Senior Columnist  Thu, January 26, 2023

What’s everybody getting so eggcited about?

Okay, sure, egg prices have soared, generating tons of news stories about the coming eggpocalypse, plus an eggzhausting parade of bad egg puns. As you’ve probably heard, eggs cost 60% more than they did a year ago, causing cake and omelet outrages nationwide. Consumer groups are demanding investigations into price gouging. More Americans want to circumvent Big Egg by raising their own chickens.

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But hold on a minute. Though a tasty staple, eggs represent a tiny portion of all food spending, at both the household and the national level. As with other types of inflation, this too shall pass.

Eggzagerated inflation coverage, meanwhile, bums out consumers and obscures a generally positive trend in price levels and improving purchasing power.

Here are the numbers. The average American consumes about 278 eggs per year. The average cost of a dozen eggs in 2022 was $2.86. Call that 24 cents per egg. Multiply that by 278 eggs per year and you get about $67 in spending on eggs per person each year. There are 2.6 people in the average household, so total eggzpenditures are about $173 per year, per household.

Food accounts for 12.4% of the typical household budget, or about $8,300 per year. At $173 per year, eggs represent just 2% of all food spending. Total household spending is about $67,000 per year, so eggs represent just .03% of all consumer outlays. It’s not nothing, but it’s not much, either.

These are rough estimates that conflate wholesale and retail prices, along with eggs consumed at home and those ordered at restaurants. But top-down estimates show the same vanishing impact of higher egg prices on consumer budgets. U.S. egg sales generate about $13 billion in annual revenue. Total food spending is around $2.1 trillion. That would peg eggs at 0.6% of all food spending, and food spending, again, is about one-eight of all consumer spending. Not eggzactly ruinous.

NEW YORK, UNITES STATES - JANUARY 21: Inreased prices of eggs are seen at egg shelves after the reduction in productivity brought on by poultry fatalities caused by various illnesses in New York, United States on January 21, 2023. The egg prices jumped by two to three times across the country, from 3 to 4 dollars per package to 9 to 11 dollars for organic eggs and from 2 to 3 dollars to 5 to 7 dollars for regular eggs. (Photo by Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Eggzagerated? Increased prices of eggs are seen in New York after the reduction in productivity brought on by poultry fatalities caused by various illnesses. There’s a different eggzlpanation for egg inflation. The worst avian flu outbreak in US history has killed millions of chickens and caused a shortage of eggs.

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