Why eggs are so darn eggs-pensive

It’s true that you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. But you do need to be able to afford them first.

The average price for a dozen eggs in California last week was $7.37, per the USDA, up more than $5 from the $2.35 average cost in January 2022. That’s a price increase of nearly 214%.

And the rest of the country isn’t too far behind – egg prices saw the highest jump of all grocery store items last year (49%). The average US carton of a dozen eggs cost $3.59 in November 2022, per the latest data from the St. Louis Fed, up from $1.93 in January.

🥚📈 Driving the increase: The worst avian influenza – or bird flu – epidemic in history, which killed more than 43 million egg-laying hens last year (out of ~420 million). This high death total was partly due to the fact that if one bird in the flock gets infected, farmers are mandated to euthanize any remaining chickens to prevent further spread of the disease.

• Something also worth mentioning: eggconomy-wide* inflation has raised the costs of labor and chicken feed, meaning prices at the grocery store would’ve gotten more egg-spensive* anyways – but they most likely wouldn't have gone this high without the outbreak.

👀 Looking ahead… Egg deliveries were up over 10% last week, and wholesale prices have begun to drop. Good news for consumer wallets, yes, though grocery store prices lag behind wholesale. So it may be a little while longer until this story’s ending is – another pun incoming – sunny-side up.*

*We're genuinely sorry, we can't help it if the puns are too eggs-quisite.