AIER’s Thanksgiving Cost Index Climbs Over 5 Percent from 2022 to 2023

For the previous few years, we’ve got reported on the change in costs related to numerous vacation seasons. The Thanksgiving Price Index was the primary, a product of our need to trace not simply common value tendencies, however these of products and companies linked to particular occasions.

The constituents of the Thanksgiving Price Index embrace the six CPI subcategories: turkey (and different poultry), sauces and gravies, bread (rolls and biscuits), canned fruit, greens, and pies and truffles. We additionally observe the value of meals away from house for comparability’s sake. With out additional ado, the value adjustments are proven beneath, first as a ten yr chart, after which over the previous three years. 

Thanksgiving Price Index constituents (pink vertical line signifies begin of COVID financial coverage response), 10 years

The Inflation Discount Act however, the Thanksgiving Price Index rose 5.3 p.c between October 2022 and October 2023, from an index degree of 1378.96 to 1451.78. That’s considerably lower than the 17.8 p.c enhance from October 2021 to 2022, however a steeper enhance than each the 2020 to 2021 (3.37 p.c) and 2019 to 2020 (2.94 p.c) rises. The price of consuming at a restaurant rose virtually identically over the identical time interval (5.37 p.c).

The twenty-year development within the mixed index is proven beneath — once more with the beginning of the Fed’s COVID response indicated by a horizontal pink bar. Since October 2019, our Thanksgiving Price Index has risen 32 p.c (1099.537 to 1451.781).

AIER Thanksgiving Price Index, 2013 – current

(Supply: Bloomberg Finance, LP)

The American Farm Bureau Federation calculates that Thanksgiving dinners might be about 4.5 p.c cheaper than final yr’s traditionally excessive costs, reaching the identical conclusions that we do utilizing a considerably totally different basket of products.

We additionally look at a second set of costs, greatest described as “secondary” or “auxiliary” Thanksgiving bills. They embrace prices that are usually incurred round Thanksgiving however don’t embrace meals: transportation, grooming, and the like. Between 2022 and 2023, three of those costs took half within the general deflationary development: for gasoline, airline tickets, and intercity transportation (buses and trains), costs declined. But a handful of seasonally-engaged companies — haircuts, dry cleansing/laundry, and pet care — rose at almost twice the October year-over-year headline CPI fee (3.2 p.c) from October 2022 to October 2023. 

In 2023, People are dealing with one other costly vacation season stemming largely from the financial interventions enacted throughout the preliminary levels of the COVID pandemic. Disinflation is underway, however because the AIER Thanksgiving Price Index makes clear these results are taking impact each slowly and never pervasively. The uptrend in each the final value degree, and on this cultural touchstone as nicely, are the enduring legacy of the 2020 coverage decisions of the Federal Reserve.