Between groceries and restaurants, Americans are spending more of their income on food than they have in 30 years.
That’s according to the latest data from the USDA, which shows that U.S. consumers spent more than 11% of their disposable income on eating — whether at home or at a restaurant — in 2022, the highest percentage since 1991.
“This is really a metric that’s about the share of our disposable personal income which the USDA tracks, and which recently was at essentially a 31-year high,” Jesse Newman, food reporter for the Wall Street Journal, told CBS News.
Experts say painfully high food prices, and ongoing inflation more generally, help explain why many Americans are down on the economy despite low unemployment, rising wages and steady economic growth. Inflation is expected to continue slowing this year, with the National Association for Business Economists on Monday forecasting that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — a basket of common goods and services — will decline to an annual rate of 2.4% this year, compared with 4.1% in 2023 and 8% in 2022.
I really wish the media would stop spouting this tripe about lots of jobs, rising wages, and economic growth. None of those things are actually happening in ways that benefit average people.
My raise this year: .
Inflation this year: ⚪
Thanks, boss. Appreciate it.
This is by design. Inflation is designed to make you work harder to justify a raise that barely keeps your standard of living intact.
More profits for your boss, same standard of living (or lower) for you…
Inflation is wildly out of control now, but even pre-pandemic, the central bank’s 2% target inflation is designed to make you work harder for nothing in return
2% inflation isn’t designed to hurt workers, it’s meant to encourage investment in the economy. It helps workers and people who are net borrowers.
If you are a net borrowers, you pay that back with future dollars. Inflation reduces the value of future dollars. Let’s say you get a 3% raise but inflation is 3%. Your boss is being stupid and you basically didn’t get a raise.
But if your mortgage is $2,000 per month, you now have 3% more money to pay it off. That’s because your mortgage doesn’t increase with inflation. So the inflation helps you pay off your loans.
It’s the same with businesses. Investors could either loan money out or invest directly in businesses. Higher inflation makes them more likely to invest in their businesses, because money sitting in the bank loses value due to inflation. This causes them to hire more people.
2% is a good sweet spot that encourages borrowing and investing in businesses, but isn’t too high. Obviously the problem now is that inflation remains above 2%, and there has been no relief from past increases. It would be much better if minimum wage was increased to help out people at the bottom deal with them.
my mortgage does go up with inflation because the central bank raises rates to fight inflation, and i live in a stupid country where a 25yr amortized mortgage isn’t really a 25yr mortgage… you need to renew it every 5 years at whatever interest rates the banks dream up.
Why would a 25 year fixed rate loan not exist? It hurts borrowers when rates are low and lenders when rates are high.
Although it saves you the trouble and expense of refinancing in five years when rates are low again.
Inflation is wildly out of control now
But, inflation has been going down. It’s currently around 3.1%.
I made about $10k more this year than last year, still struggling with food costs.
I got a new job that came with a 25k raise last year and the only reason we can afford to eat 3 good meals a day is we started a garden where a lot of our food comes from and I started making most things from scratch, doughs, jam, oat milk, next is peanut butter.
The cheapest loaf of shitty bread at the closest store is $3. At the next closest store 40 minutes away it’s $2.50. What the fuck happened to $1 store brand bread that was fine enough and not almost rock hard by the time you get it.
Man, I just spent $6.29 for a plain loaf of wheat bread! Where are you getting $3 a loaf bread?!
It’s the acme brand plain white loaf, it’s probably been about 6 months since I went in the bread isle but that bread is horrible by the time you buy it, at least at my store, and really only good for toast.
When we were buying bread we would buy something with family in the name? Which was the next cheapest one at around $4-5 for a plain white loaf.
I like how central banks and economists only truly got spooked once wage inflation was a thing
I can’t speak for everyone else, but my hourly rate increased.
It was still less then inflation, benefits cut and hours reduced, but “Promotion!”
/s
Yep, the CEO of our multi-billion dollar company recently sent an email congratulating everyone on a job well done and record profits this quarter, yet our department laid off everyone they newly hired and cut all our hours. My boss said he’s worked here for 30 years and he’s never seen cost cutting like this. It’s disgusting.
“When a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a useful metric”
As someone working for a small business owner, I sure as fuck wish the economy would boom so my wage could go up as well. We just don’t have any customers with expendable income, and our products are on a “wanted not needed” priority. If I had the capital to start my own, more successful, business, I would.
I’m not rich but I do pretty well, and I honestly cannot understand how the vast majority of people can afford to eat dinner. We try to eat mostly fresh, home cooked foods and it costs a fucking fortune.
You should try eating shitty ultra-processed foods instead. They’re much cheaper.*
*“Cheaper” only refers to cost of food and does not in any way refer to increased health-care costs related to poor diet.
My experience has been the exact opposite…the processed stuff in boxes has gone way up in price, but most of our produce has stayed pretty stable. Fresh berries have gotten a lot more expensive, but we just get frozen ones which are much cheaper. Seems like we’re always able to find great deals on melons, oranges, avocados, carrots, zucchini, etc. All hail HEB
I find cutting meat makes a massive difference
It probably depends on where you live. Our groceries got cheaper this year compared to last, so that’s cool.
Yes but “cheaper this year” is still absurdly high compared to before the pandemic and we never got any increase in wages during that time.
My coworker spent $17 on a whopper meal 5 days in a row.
Homie dropped $85 on whoppers this week. Like wtf
$50 would sound whack as fuck.
A nearby hotel currently has a $26 cheeseburger on their menu, and a few $12 drafts. 2 beers and a burger at $50 before tax and tip, looking at like $65.
For $85 here I could make steak for dinner every weeknight. But I was in the same trap as he was for a while.
Yeah Ive been there. But… That was when 2 mcdoubles and a 10 piece nug ran me like $5.
2 mcdoubles and a 10 piece nug today is $13 before tax.
I want you to understand that if he ever complains about money you have the internet’s permission to slap the ever living fuck out of him.
He makes half of what I make (he’s new/young). He has 3 kids. He has a galaxy s24 ultra. He has a PS5.
Me and fellow coworkers keep trying to get him into PC gaming. “I donno I can’t drop that kinda money.”
🤷♂️
I even gave him a $500 build list and told him I’d build it lol.
My slapper is itching
And then the restaurant association goes on the news whining about “nobody wants to eat out any more”.
This isn’t anywhere near that expensive, but there’s a local cafe my daughter likes me to take her to. A chai latte for me and a smoothie and a yogurt parfait for her (our usual) costs $20. And they’re a lot cheaper than plenty of other places offering similar fare.
Dude, $17 gets me a giant plate of local Mexican food and a Modelo. Who tf is spending that at Burger King
Yeah it’s sad but it makes me happy I was always cheap af and never really enjoyed the “premium” stuff like big Mac or whoppers. With the phone app and its deals paired with the cheapest offering most of those places I can still spend like 5-7 bucks and get more than enough crap food for a meal. I am pretty bad myself, but I also have no idea how anyone can enjoy 5 straight days of any fast food. It’s a once a week thing, maybe twice, depending on time and budget. Again I know it’s bad!
I bought chicken pad thai from an Asian cuisine place from the nearby (somehow not dying) mall Wednesday. It was $9.99 & almost a half-gallon of of some of the best pad thai I’ve ever had. So far it’s been 3 meals & I still have enough for one more.
Fuck fast food, they’ve pretty much lost me forever after this open & obvious price gouging. Hope they all die in a fire.
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Groceries is a fuck of a lot more than lunch.
Groceries is lunch, dinner, snacks and breakfast. And toilet paper.
Yeah. Roughly $90 a week in groceries gets me 21 meals + snacks… Not 5 meals.
Gee, I wonder what could be causing this?
“There are other factors that contribute to inflation that have not received enough attention. One of those factors is extreme price hikes — in other words, companies raising prices far more than required to offset higher costs even when accounting for shifts in supply and demand, resulting in the highest profit margins we have ever seen in the last 70 years,”
So, price gouging.
Yup. Nothing like decades of GQP policies allowing companies to create what are essentially monopolies. Merger after merger without government intervention means competition is dying and companies can and do charge whatever they want.
“Cereal Company CEO, why is a box of cereal now $6?”
“Well, you see, we wanted to stick it everyone. Cheerios don’t cost that much, but what are we gonna do, not screw everyone?”
Haven’t you heard? Cereal is now for dinner too according to Kellogg’s CEO, and I guess that means it can be more expensive! But shhh, don’t tell your nutritionist because they’ll let you know that most modern cereal is actually more of a snack than something suitable for a main meal. You’d think access to affordable, nutritious food would be a pretty basic human right for countries to ensure, but instead we have things like cereal prices rising an average 28% since 2020 (12% in the last year alone).
I’m convinced that asshole brought up cereal for dinner because most people will skip breakfast when trying to cut food costs. I know I do
I buy that cheap shit in the huge ass bag. Fuck Kelloggs.
Not to leave out the boxes getting smaller.
Hear hear. Shrinkflation is maddeningly annoying.
I’m boycotting food
steps on scales
Dammit, NineMileTower is onto something.
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A little curious how much is being spent on delivery services. Not trying to sound like boomer punching down. Like everyone else, I’ve noticed the significantly higher prices at grocery stores. But I’ve also noticed a lot of my coworkers use food delivery apps when our office is a very short drive to two groceries and a dozen restaurants. And we get an hour for lunch.
I don’t see how allowing someone else to grab and deliver the same amount of groceries should have any baring what so ever on prices. It doesn’t change demand, it changes the final delivery mechanism after the point of sale.
It doesn’t change demand, but it does change pricing and shift demand to convenience.
If Moto’s experience is the same as what I’ve seen, choosing delivery over purchasing in person doesn’t just add a delivery charge, but also increases prices across the board, and then adds a service charge for delivery.
I suppose the argument for groceries is that an employee’s time is spent collecting the goods before the delivery method. But in a fast food scenario where everything is made to order, regardless of dine-in, dine-out, drive-thru, or delivery, an increased price point across the board, before the delivery surcharge, is tough to accept. Though I understand that if restaurants aren’t managing their own deliveries, they are often embedding third-party delivery app charges in their prices.
All of that to say, while I understand the arguments, I also know there’s profit being made at each step, and they can only keep gouging for so long before the whole house of cards comes crumbling down.
He’s not saying it was pushing prices. He was saying it was potentially a big driver of the OP headline.
Yes, prices are going up, but a potential big factor in the increase of spending on food could be associated delivery costs.
They are likely considered part of “money spent on food” as calculated by the study, and have been a much more prevalent thing since the pandemic.
No, that’s literally my point. The peice at the grocery store is BEFORE delivery service charges. Delivery isn’t food. It’s delivery. Grocery prices have gone up by this amount at least around here. I’m saying greedlfation has been bad on food.
I’ve seen delivery drivers picking up orders at 7-11.
Boggles the mind that someone would pay essentially double for a hoagie.
The main reason I use food ordering apps is because I don’t want to attempt to place an order over the phone with someone who talks too fast, mumbles, and apparently has never ordered food before because they don’t tell you how long it will take or how much it’s going to be and will get my order wrong with no paper trail.
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February was the month we finally broke and said “absolutely no more schedule eating out”. We were getting eaten alive (pun intended) in our budget by lunch costs that add up so much faster than they used to.
I’m curious what the long term health affects of this are going to be as people are forced to eat less and less. Yes, it may help with obesity, but what about malnutrition? I’m overweight, but I’ve lost a fuck ton of weight in the last year from not being able to afford food and I’m at the point where it’s not uncommon to go a day or 3 without eating. And it’s only going to get worse for me. I just went to the grocery store today and bought food for the first time in a month and some sandwich fixings/bread, a pound of chicken, 2 tomatoes, a container of greens and two small bags of snacks cost over $50. Hopefully I can stretch that for a few weeks.
I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. Check out local food banks - they typically don’t ask questions and you can go to multiple food banks if you need to. Good luck to you.
In case you don’t understand who you should actually be mad about here, it’s not fucking inflation when (the 6 remaining) food companies are making record profits, and have been for 3 years now.
And here I am just stealing more food than ever.
I barely remember the H.W. Bush recession. I didn’t remember this aspect of it.
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Honestly, Americans could stand to eat a little less than they have been. Like yes, skipping dessert. Americans gained what, an average of 40 pounds during the pandemic? And those pounds never went away either. Personally, I went from 165 to 180. >:(
Thanks biden
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Bigly wrong, the best wrong! A guy came up to me - big guy, huge, macho guy, tears streaming down his face… he says to me, “sir, I love how amazing your wrong is. It’s fantastic!”
My dude, prices were shooting up well before Biden entered office.
Did he lean on the food prices lever again?
