Food · Single item chart
Grade A Large · per dozen · US city average · all available data
Reading the chart. All three lines converge at 100 in 1980 and diverge from there. Looking left of 1980, the eggs CPI subindex shows that a dozen eggs in 1935 cost about 42% of what they cost in 1980 — eggs got more expensive in nominal terms over those 45 years, but at a slower rate than overall CPI (which sat at about 27% of its 1980 level in 1947). Looking right of 1980, the actual retail price (solid red line) tracked close to BLS's own subindex through about 2014, then diverged sharply during the 2022–2025 period as avian flu shocks and pandemic supply disruptions hit retail prices harder than the smoothed subindex captured. The retail dollar series only begins in 1980, so we cannot directly compare what families paid before then.