The grocery work-time index
A basket of 11 everyday U.S. groceries and a gallon of gas took 112 minutes of work at the average hourly wage in 1980. It bottomed out at 76 minutes in 2020 and took 86 in 2025, +12% since the low and -24% since 1980.
The chart
Minutes of work at the average hourly wage to buy one of each item below. Hover a point for the year.
Item by item
- A dozen large eggs7.4 → 8.1 min (+11%)
- A pound of sliced bacon12.8 → 13.4 min (+5%)
- Frozen orange juice concentrate10.3 → 8.8 min (-15%)
- A pound of white bread4.5 → 3.6 min (-20%)
- A half gallon of ice cream15.9 → 12.2 min (-24%)
- A 16 oz bag of potato chips17.9 → 12.8 min (-28%)
- A pound of chocolate chip cookies13.8 → 9.7 min (-30%)
- A pound of whole chicken6.2 → 3.9 min (-37%)
- A pound of tomatoes5.9 → 3.5 min (-40%)
- A gallon of regular gas10.9 → 6.2 min (-43%)
- A pound of white sugar3.8 → 2.0 min (-48%)
- A pound of bananas3.0 → 1.2 min (-58%)
From 1980 to 2025. Ground beef, Cheddar cheese and Coffee are left out because BLS has gaps or starts later.
What it shows
Nominal prices rose for every item, but the average hourly wage rose from $6.85 to $31.34, faster than most of them. Measured in work, the basket got cheaper over the period as a whole, though not every year: it climbed again from 2008 to 2012, and again after 2020.
2 items now take longer to earn than in the first year of the data: a dozen large eggs (+11%) and a pound of sliced bacon (+5%).
The basket is the 12 items BLS has priced every year since 1980: egg, white bread, gas, bacon, banana, ice cream, potato chip, chicken, chocolate chip cookie, tomato, sugar, orange juice. Prices are BLS U.S. city averages; the wage is average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees (CES0500000008), about four in five private-sector workers. It is not the CPI and ignores rent, health care and everything else outside a grocery bag.
To guess the year from a basket like this, play Price Year. For one year at a time, see prices the year you were born. We wrote up what the series shows in groceries take 24% less work than in 1980.
Use this chart
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