LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – While some Michiganders will receive money to “reduce the cost of groceries,” the prices of many market items are actually on the rise.
On Tuesday, Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that the more than 1.3 million people in more than 700,000 households who qualify will continue to receive at least $95 a month to “help lower the cost of groceries.”
“This extra food assistance will help Michiganders feed their families during the holiday season,” Governor Whitmer said, “I will continue to work with our partners at the federal and state levels so that residents can keep their hard-earned dollars to pay for other critical household expenses.”
Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveal that prices are on the rise among many common household food items from the 2021 year till now.
- Eggs: 49%
- Butter: 27%
- Flour: 25%
- Crackers: 20%
- Cookies: 19%
- Pies, tarts, and turnovers: 19%
- Uncooked poultry (including turkey): 18%
- Potatoes: 16%
- Bread: 16%
- Milk: 15%
- Sugar and sweets: 13%
- Ham: 8%
“The headline inflation numbers are encouraging for the general economy but consumers are not being relieved at the grocery store,” Associate Professor at the Department of Agricultural Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University, David Ortega, said, “We’re looking at November being the ninth consecutive month of double-digit grocery price inflation. Grocery prices are still 12% higher than they were a year ago.”
While inflation has a large part to play in the higher costs, there are other factors contributing to higher grocery prices this holiday season.
“A lot of that has to do with increased cost of production and transportation, but also increased demand for these things like butter, where people go out and buy things like eggs, butter, and flour for their cooking, so there’s also a demand story here as well,” Ortega said.
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The BLS also marked the 8.5% increase in the cost of food dining out over the last 12 months.
“The index for full service meals rose 9.0 percent over the last 12 months, and the index for limited service meals rose 6.7 percent over the same period,” the BLS report states, “Other indexes with notable increases over the last year include household furnishings and operations (+7.6 percent), medical care (+4.2 percent), new vehicles (+7.2 percent), and recreation (+4.7 percent).”
Ortega also noted how the food price increases and grocery price increases peaked in August.
“They’re just slowly starting to come down. We’re headed in the right direction but consumers are still not feeling relief at the store and that’s because inflation captures the rate of price increases over time, so just because the inflation rate starts to calm down a bit doesn’t mean that things are getting cheaper. They’re just not rising in price as quickly.”
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