Groceries take 24% less work than in 1980, and 12% more than in 2020
A fixed basket of 12 U.S. groceries and gas took 112 minutes of work in 1980, 76 in 2020 and 86 in 2025. Both halves of the grocery argument are right.
Two claims about groceries get thrown at each other all the time. One says food has never been cheaper. The other says nobody can afford to eat any more. Both cite real numbers, and the reason they never settle it is that they start counting from different years.
We built a small index to see both at once. Take 12 everyday items the Bureau of Labor Statistics has priced every year since 1980: eggs, white bread, a gallon of gas, bacon, bananas, ice cream, potato chips, whole chicken, chocolate chip cookies, tomatoes, sugar and frozen orange juice. Add up what one of each costs. Divide by the average hourly wage of production and nonsupervisory workers. The result is how many minutes of work the basket takes.
- the basket in 1980
- 112 min
- the low point, 2020
- 76 min
- the basket in 2025
- 86 min
Minutes of work for the basket
| Year | Minutes |
|---|---|
| 1980 | 112.4 |
| 1990 | 106.9 |
| 2000 | 89.9 |
| 2010 | 91.1 |
| 2019 | 78.5 |
| 2020 | 76.1 |
| 2021 | 78.7 |
| 2022 | 86.4 |
| 2023 | 85.5 |
| 2024 | 85.4 |
| 2025 | 85.6 |
The long view
Over 45 years the basket fell from 112 minutes to 86, a drop of about 24%. Most of that came in the 1990s. The basket was still at 107 minutes in 1990 and was down to 90 by 2000. It then sat around 90 for 15 years before falling again in the late 2010s.
Wages did most of the work. They rose 4.6 times over the period while most of these prices rose between 2 and 4 times.
The short view
The low point was 2020, at 76 minutes. In 2022 the basket jumped almost 10% in one year, to 86 minutes, the largest single-year rise in the series. It has stayed there since. Wages caught up with the new prices but did not bring the basket back down.
So anyone who started shopping for themselves in the late 2010s has watched the work cost of groceries go up by about 12% and stay up. That is not a misreading of the receipts. It is a real change, and it is also small next to the fall since 1980. Both statements are true, and an argument that picks one of them is choosing a start year.
The full series
The grocery work-time index page has every year from 1980, a chart, each item's own change, and an embed code if you want to put the chart on your own site. The figures come straight from BLS, which publishes them in the public domain.
Sources
More guides
- What groceries cost the year you were born, and what they cost in workEggs, bread, gas and coffee in 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010, from BLS average prices, and how many minutes of work each took then and now.
- Only three groceries got harder to buy since 1980Of 15 U.S. groceries BLS has priced since the 1980s, only ground beef, eggs and bacon now take more minutes of work. Bananas take 58% less.
- How to play Price Year, Open Range and Pricele 1000Three new daily price games: date a grocery receipt, give a price range, or score out of 1,000. The rules, the scoring and how to get better at each.
- How to compare two countries without fooling yourselfCost-of-living comparisons go wrong in the same six ways every time. What follows is a method that survives contact with a real decision.