Ground beef.

100% beef · per pound · US city average · all available data

A pound of ground beef vs. official inflation, 1943–2025

Indexed: 1984 = 100, the year all three series converge · Three lines, three measures of beef inflation: what consumers actually paid (BLS retail), what BLS's beef CPI subindex reports, and what overall CPI says about inflation across all items

Ground beef, retail price (BLS APU, 1984+) Beef and veal, CPI subindex (BLS, 1943+) CPI-U All Items (BLS, 1947+)

Reading the chart. All three lines converge at 100 in 1984 and diverge from there. Looking left of 1984, the beef CPI subindex shows beef prices were a small fraction of their 1984 level back in the 1940s — beef became dramatically more expensive in nominal terms over those four decades, in line with general inflation. Looking right of 1984, the actual retail price (solid red line) clearly outpaced both BLS's own subindex and overall CPI. Beef grew 4.73x at retail while CPI All Items grew 3.10x — meaning beef inflated 53% faster than the headline number. And BLS's own beef subindex understated retail by 16%, even with its substitution and quality adjustments.