The price of eggs has long been a political symbol. In 1989, as Poland implemented free market reforms, advisers to finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz famously told their boss to watch the price of eggs closely. If farmers resumed bringing their eggs to market and prices began to drop, the economy would stabilize. They did and it did (although unemployment increased).
The price of eggs has been less kind to Joe Biden and his economic advisers. Even as overall inflation has slowed and overall grocery prices have cooled, eggs have remained stubbornly expensive. Between January 2022 and January 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of a dozen Grade A eggs in an American city skyrocketed from $1.93 to $4.82. During the same period, the annual rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), had fallen from 7.5 percent to 6.4 percent. By September 2024—with the presidential election looming—CPI inflation had slowed to 2.4 percent year-over-year, but egg prices were still stubbornly high at $3.82.* See where this is going yet?
Egg prices quickly caught on as a meme, helping to sustain inflation as a powerful election-year issue, even as actual inflation was steadily dropping. Even Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, eventually tried to get in on the act (with mixed results). But how did egg prices get so high, why did they remain that way even after other inflation indexes began to drop? And why, as of January 2025, are grocery stores nationwide experiencing severe shortages?