The excellent team at the new Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability (CFDAS) has just pulled together a new dashboard illustrating data on the prices of more than 50 food and beverages items over time (underlying data come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Click on a food, and the dashboard shows the price of of the food over time in nominal terms, switch over to another tab and the same price trend will be shown in inflation-adjusted terms, or switch over to the final tab and see the time-price of the food. The time-price is the amount of the food that can be bought with an hour’s worth of work given the average wage rate (also measured by BLS) at the time the price was measured.
Check out the dashboard here.
Oh, and if you’re wondering, the price of milk was $3.74/gallon in December 2021 (the most recent data available from BLS). And, a worker at the average wage in December 2021 could buy 8.39 gallons of milk with one hour of work.
