Inflation Continues To Be Of Concern, With Beef, Chicken & Coffee Leading The Pack
ANALYSIS
For many months, when the government ceased publishing data, RCBJ has paused its “Price Tracker” — a tool enabling readers to see the effects on prices for various commodities from January 2024 through today. Now with data available again, we are back online. Just one caveat: data was blacked out during the government shutdown in October, 2025. There have also been a few holes in the data, and where those holes appear, rather than extrapolate the data, we simply left the month blank. The blanks appear as a gap in the graphs below.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Overall inflation decelerated over the course of 2025, from 2.9% year-over-year in December 2024 to 2.7% last month. Core inflation, a measure that excludes the more volatile food and energy prices, fell even more steeply, from 3.2% to 2.6%.”
Looking at food prices, by year-end 2025, egg prices have returned to a relative normal, down from $6.223 in March, now at $2.712 per dozen. The easing of the impacts of bird flu helped bring egg prices down by 21% in 2025.
Beef prices continued to rise, month after month, up at about $6.50 per pound, an increase of about 20% from January 2025. The sky seems to be the limit as the climb has been steady and relentless, going from about $5.00 per pound in January of 2024 to a recent record high. For more information on beef prices, read: Beef Prices Are at a Record. The Winners: Cattle Ranchers – WSJ
Milk has had a slow, but steady increase in pricing, up in December to an average of $4.05 per gallon.
A real heartache for Americans though is coffee, both at home and at the corner coffee shop, with coffee prices up almost 20% in 2025 (the gap in the graph is from the government shutdown when data was unavailable).
Electricity prices breached a recent high and came in at $0.190/kwh, but receded to $0.189/kwh. Electricity and natural gas prices are on everyone’s mind, especially in the winter.
National unemployment ticked up to retreated down to 4.5% in November to 4.4% in December.
A bright spot was in the 30-year mortgage rate which saw another monthly dip, down to an average of 6.06%. This is the number to watch.
How the impact of tariffs or threatened tariffs, the doings in South American and the war in Ukraine, and civil unrest at home will affect prices in 2026 and beyond will be the subject of future reports with many producers and utilities announcing price increases.
The categories we are tracking are:
- Whole Milk
- Grade A Large Eggs
- Navel Oranges
- Tomatoes, Field Grown
- Ground Chuck, 100% Beef
- Chicken, Fresh, Whole
- Electricity Per KWH
- Gasoline, Regular Unleaded
- Unemployment Rate
- 30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate (Average)
Scroll down to view the data.
