Dive Brief:
- Food-at-home prices rose in February at a 1% annual rate — the slowest rate of grocery inflation since June 2021 — according to Consumer Price Index data released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- The food-at-home index held steady last month compared with January.
- Overall inflation ticked up slightly in January, reaching a 3.2% annual pace, and was also higher on a month-to-month basis.
Dive Insight:
The last statistics from the BLS extend a monthslong trend that has seen grocery inflation continue to lose momentum even as overall inflation has gyrated.
Yearly grocery inflation eclipsed the overall Consumer Price Index in February 2022 enroute to a four-decade high of 13.5% later that year, but then began a steady decline that continued last month. Grocery inflation fell back below the overall rate of inflation in August and remains in that zone.
So-called core inflation, which excludes the food and energy sectors, declined to 3.8% in February, slightly below the rate in January, the government reported.
Grocery prices were tame in February on a month-to-month basis across most of the categories the government tracks, with costs for some goods declining.
Inflation for the group that includes cereals and bakery products came in at 0.5% last month. Meanwhile, produce prices were up 1.5% even as consumers saw lower costs for processed fruits and vegetables.
Prices for meat, poultry and fish were off 0.3% in February and pork prices moved down by almost a full percentage point. However, egg prices shot up 5.8% in February — recalling the skyrocketing prices for the commodity that characterized 2022 and early 2023.
While the latest figures indicate that grocery inflation remains calm, prices for many goods are still well above their level a few years ago, a dynamic that has drawn a high-profile response from the Biden administration.
For example, Circana data released this week by 210 Analytics shows that frozen food prices are up by more than a quarter over the past three years. Prices for meat and fresh produce have risen more than 16% during that period, and deli prices have gone up by over 18%, 210 Analytics reported.
