Eggstortion! How U.S. Food Prices Have Surged Since 2021

While Americans have gotten used to sticker shock over the past couple of years as prices for food, gas and other everyday items surged, many shoppers had to look twice when they bought a couple of eggs lately. The average price for a dozen Grade A large eggs climbed to $4.95 last month according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from just $2.52 twelve months earlier. According to the latest CPI report, overall egg prices rose by more than 50 percent over the past year.

So what’s behind the “eggflation” crisis that has even caused restaurants like Waffle House to add a $0.50 surcharge for every egg that customers want in their omelette? While overall food price inflation moderated in 2024, egg prices have been driven skywards by several outbreaks of bird flu, which have severely disrupted egg supply in recent months. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. farmers were forced to kill 21 million egg-laying hens due to HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) in the first weeks of 2025 alone, adding to more than 13 millions hens "depopulated" in December 2024. "The timing and scope of HPAI outbreaks has created an imbalance in the nation’s supply of table shell eggs with supplies short in some regions while barely adequate in others, the USDA said last week. Due to the fact that eggs are hard to substitute, even modest declines in supply have a large impact on prices, resulting in the latest surge.

As our chart shows, egg prices are up more than 200 percent over the past four years, avian flu outbreaks cause prices to spike in 2022 and 2024. Other food staples have also seen significant price increases over the past four years, with coffee, sugar and beef among the products most affected by the inflation crisis. Tomatoes, bananas and cheese are among the few examples that haven't been impacted as much by inflation, as our chart nicely illustrates.