Prices of common grocery items have largely fallen or kept stable in the first half of 2024, underscoring how many Americans are feeling better about inflation.
The ConsumerAffairs Datasembly Shopping Cart Index fell 2.7% in June from January. The index, based on average prices of 25 commonly-bought grocery items, was down $4.33, totaling $153.32 in June from $157.65 in January.
The five items with the biggest drops were cookies, peanut butter, potato chips, cola and white rice, while the biggest price hikes were for bacon, waffles, mayonnaise, frosted doughnuts and organic eggs.
Still, price drops outweighed price hikes in the first half of the year. See our chart below on the prices of these 25 items at the end of June and how they moved since January.
What's behind grocery prices?
The federal government's index tracking grocery prices has outpaced overall inflation since the start of the pandemic, jumping 25% in the first quarter of 2023 from the fourth quarter of 2019.
But grocery prices have eased since the start of 2023 because commodity prices for raw foods have fallen, said Thomas Klitgaard, economic research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a July blog post. The savings have offset higher wages for workers, he said, adding that corporations squeezing out profits have been a smaller contributor to price increases.
If raw food prices and wages were to rise together again, the wallets of grocery shoppers would take a hit. In May, Walmart and Target suggested that price cuts were on the way for grocery and household items.