Thanksgiving dinner will be a little cheaper this year
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A typical Thanksgiving dinner for 10 will cost about $58 this year, a new report finds — down around 5% from last year but up nearly 20% in unadjusted dollars from 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why it matters: Grocery prices are a key way Americans experience inflation, and Thanksgiving puts food costs front and center.
Driving the news: Those figures come from the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual survey, released Wednesday and based on observed nationwide prices for a hypothetical basket of Thanksgiving staples.
- That includes turkey — obviously! — plus cranberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie mix, and more.
- ☝️ Axios created an expanded menu, which includes two other Thanksgiving favorites: ham and potatoes.
Between the lines: Adjusting for inflation back to 1982, as the group always does, this year's Farm Bureau basket is one of the cheapest in decades.
Yes, but: That's not how everyday people think about prices, and grocery costs have been a major worry for many since the pandemic and through the recent election.
- Indeed, 44% of Thanksgiving hosts surveyed are concerned about the cost of having folks over for dinner this year, per a separate Deloitte report
- 3 in 10 hosts surveyed are inviting fewer people, Deloitte found, while some are also expecting guests to bring dishes to reduce costs.
The bottom line: Thanksgiving may be yet another example of how economists and everyday people think about prices and inflation in very different ways.
