Egg prices rose to all-time highs ahead of Easter before big drop
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Eggs are seen for sale at a grocery store in Glendale, California, earlier this year. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
Egg prices rose to a record high of $6.23 per dozen in March, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released on Thursday that pre-dates a recent decline in retail prices.
The big picture: President Trump claimed credit last month for a drop in wholesale egg prices, as bird flu outbreaks that had forced producers to cull millions of chickens and sparked shortages began to wane — and his administration moved to tackle high prices by boosting egg imports.
- Now consumers are starting to see those wholesale price drops reflected at the grocery store.
- And eggs are in high demand over the Jewish holiday of Passover, which starts Saturday, and Easter, held on April 20 this year. This can drive prices higher.
By the numbers: The price for a dozen grade A large eggs increased from $5.90 in February to $6.23 in March, per the BLS. In January, it was $4.95 a dozen. That data does not reflect the subsequent plunge in wholesale prices that consumers are beginning to feel.
- Wholesale egg prices have fallen from an average of $6.55 per dozen on Jan. 24 to $3.26 last Friday, per Agriculture Department data — which is showing up to varying degrees at grocery stores in parts of the country. In some Northeastern stores, for example, eggs are as much as 40% cheaper now than they were a month ago, when the CPI data was being collected.
Between the lines: "In the same way that just because the barrel price of oil goes down does not mean that gas prices immediately go down, there's a delay here," said University of Arkansas agricultural economist Jada Thompson in a blog post this week.
- "Retailers get to choose their own price, and they took a lot of losses when prices were exceptionally high," Thompson added.
- "They may be saying, 'I've lost money over here, so I'm going to let what I have in stock go out at the price it currently is before I lower the price, to compensate for that earlier loss.'"
Go deeper: Why food prices are still high, 5 years after COVID
Editor's note: This story and headline have been corrected to reflect that while retail egg prices hit record highs in March, based on government data, they had already begun falling by the end of the month and are now generally lower.
