Groceries
| Item | Now | Year on year | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eggs, Grade A, Largeper dozen | $2.14 | -43.3% | +43.6%from $1.49 in Jun 2016 |
| Milk, Fresh, Whole, Fortifiedper gallon | $4.32 | +7.1% | +38.6%from $3.12 in Jun 2016 |
| Bread, White, Panper pound | $1.81 | -2.7% | +36.1%from $1.33 in Jun 2016 |
| Chicken, Fresh, Wholeper pound | $2.04 | -2.0% | +45.2%from $1.41 in Jun 2016 |
| Bacon, Slicedper pound | $6.56 | -7.6% | +22.1%from $5.37 in Jun 2016 |
| Butter, Stickper pound | $3.82 | -21.7% | -8.1%from $4.15 in Apr 2018 |
| Coffee, 100%, Ground Roast, All Sizesper pound | $9.46 | +16.3% | +111.0%from $4.48 in Jun 2016 |
| All Soft Drinksper 2 litres | $2.20 | +0.6% | +52.2%from $1.44 in Apr 2018 |
These are national averages collected every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from thousands of retail outlets across US urban areas — the same collection that feeds the inflation figures. The year on year column is the honest headline: it shows which prices are actually moving now, and the answers are rarely the ones people expect.
The last column reaches back as far as each series allows, and the date is printed with it rather than described as "a decade" — two of these series begin later than that, and rounding a start date up to a rounder number would be a small lie in a table whose only job is to be accurate.
Fuel and energy
| Item | Now | Year on year | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gasoline, Unleaded Regularper gallon | $4.20 | +26.9% | +77.5%from $2.36 in Jun 2016 |
| Electricity per Kilowatt-Hourper kWh | $0.198 | +4.2% | +43.5%from $0.138 in Jun 2016 |
| Utility Gas per Thermper therm | $1.69 | +2.1% | +89.5%from $0.891 in Jun 2016 |
Energy is where households feel price changes fastest, because the purchase is frequent and the number is on display. It is also the most volatile category here: fuel can move by a quarter in a year on the back of production decisions and crude prices, while electricity tends to move in slower, stickier steps driven by generation costs and grid investment.
Electricity is priced per kilowatt-hour and piped gas per therm, so the figure that reaches your bill depends as much on how much you use as on the rate. A rate rise of a few cents per kilowatt-hour is a large annual number for a household on electric heating and a rounding error for a flat with gas.
The big purchase
Housing is the one large purchase with a genuinely public price series, published quarterly by the Census Bureau. Both figures are here because they answer different questions: the average is pulled upward by expensive sales, while the median — the middle sale — is closer to what a typical buyer paid. When the two diverge, the top of the market is doing something the middle is not.
Neither is a house price index: they measure the mix of homes that happened to sell in the quarter, so they move when the composition of sales changes as well as when values do. A quarter with more new-build activity can lift both without any existing home being worth more.
What a price becomes as a monthly commitment depends on the rate, and rates have moved further than prices lately — see this week’s mortgage rates and put a figure through the mortgage calculator to see the payment behind the headline.
What an “average price” actually means
It is not the shelf price anywhere. BLS records the prices actually charged for specific, tightly defined items — a dozen grade A large eggs, a pound of sliced bacon — across a sample of outlets in urban areas, then averages them. The definitions matter: "chicken, fresh, whole" is a different product from a tray of boneless breasts and carries a different price.
So the number is a benchmark, not a prediction of your receipt. Your own prices will differ by region, by store format, by brand and by whether the item was on promotion the day you bought it. The value of the table is comparative — this month against last year, this item against that one — rather than absolute.
Two further limits worth knowing. The collection covers urban areas, which is most of the country but not all of it. And these are averages of prices, not of what households spend: a price can fall while your grocery bill rises because you bought more, or bought differently.
Why your own costs differ
- Where you live. Regional differences are large and persistent, particularly for energy and housing. National averages flatten a range that runs from very cheap to very expensive.
- How you shop. Store format, own-brand versus branded, bulk buying and promotions can move a grocery bill by a fifth without changing a single habit that matters to you.
- What you actually buy. Substitution is invisible in a price table. When eggs spiked, plenty of households bought fewer eggs — their spending moved far less than the price did.
- Your usage. Energy is a rate multiplied by consumption, and consumption is where the variance lives: insulation, heating type, climate and household size all matter more than a cent or two per kilowatt-hour.
Which is why the useful next step is your own numbers rather than the national ones. The budget calculator takes what you actually spend and shows the shape of it, and the inflation calculator converts any past price into today’s money using the same official index that underlies this data.
What is not here
Deliberate omissions, each for the same reason — no public series carries the figure, and an estimate on a page of prices would be indistinguishable from a fact.
No city-by-city comparison. The sites that offer one run on crowd-sourced submissions. That is a reasonable thing to build and not something we will republish as official.
No cars, weddings, college or restaurant meals. The official statistics carry price indices for these, which measure change rather than level — useful for inflation, useless for answering "what does it cost". Rather than convert an index into a dollar figure and present the result as data, they are left out.
No average household budget. That comes from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and the BLS site refuses automated requests, so we have no route to it yet. It is the strongest single addition this page could gain, and it will arrive when the data does rather than before.
Questions about average prices
Where do these prices come from?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects them every month from retail outlets across US urban areas as part of the same programme that produces the consumer price index. House prices come quarterly from the Census Bureau. Both are read here from FRED, which republishes the series, and each item links to the series it came from.
Why is this price different from what I paid?
Because it is a national average of a precisely defined item, not a shelf price. Region, store, brand and promotions all move a real purchase away from the average, sometimes substantially. Use the table to compare items and trends rather than to predict a receipt.
How often is this updated?
The grocery and energy series are monthly and are published with a lag of a few weeks; house prices are quarterly. The date each figure refers to is shown with it, and the page states when the data was last read.
Why do some items show a big fall over the year?
Because they spiked earlier and have come back down. Eggs are the clearest recent example: a supply shock pushed the average far above trend, so the year-on-year comparison is now against an unusually high figure. Comparing against a longer span, as the last column does, gives a truer picture.
Is a price rise the same as inflation?
No. Inflation is the change in the cost of a whole basket weighted by how much households buy of each thing, so a single item can rise sharply while inflation stays low. The inflation calculator works with the overall index; this page shows the individual prices underneath it.