The price of eggs continues to soar for American consumers, rising by almost 6% in March even as overall inflation fell slightly.
Breaking a record high for the third consecutive month, the average cost of a dozen large eggs hit $6.23 in March – more than double the price just 12 months earlier, according to new figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday. This surpassed the previous record highs of $5.90 a dozen in February, and $4.95 in January.
The latest figures come just days after the country’s largest egg producer reported record sales and profits amid growing scrutiny over alleged price gouging.
Cal-Maine, which produces 20% of the eggs eaten in the US, made $1bn in windfall income in the first three quarters of the financial year – the profits extracted after accounting for production, processing and transport costs.
Cal-Maine’s profits more than tripled compared with the same quarter last year – and are nearly eight times as high as at the start of the bird flu outbreak in February 2022, according to financial results published on Tuesday.
In March, the Guardian reported on how major egg corporations like Cal-Maine may be using avian flu as a ruse to hike up prices. Days later, the Trump administration opened an anti-trust investigation into price-fixing by the nation’s largest egg corporations.
“Egg prices are spiraling out of control, laying bare the cracks in our corporate food system,” said Amanda Starbuck, research director of Food & Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group. “To lower egg prices, the Trump administration must take on the food monopolies, hasten and prioritize its investigation into corporate price fixing, and stop the spread of factory farms.”
Mississippi-based Cal-Maine has said that it received notice of the investigation into egg price increases last month and that it was cooperating with the investigation.
The price of eggs was a major election issue in 2024, with Trump and many voters blaming inflationary prices on Biden’s economic policies.
Trump pledged to bring down the cost of living, which eased slightly in March when the consumer price index (CPI) fell by a seasonally adjusted 0.1%, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.4%, down from 2.8% in February. The drop was largely fueled by a sharp fall in gas prices.
But last month’s inflation does not reflect the impact of Trump’s tariff mayhem, which economists have warned could cause a spike to consumer prices.
“Today’s softer than expected CPI release feels backward-looking given the large changes to trade policy seen in recent days,” Kay Haigh from Goldman Sachs Asset Management told CNBC. “Going forward, the Fed is likely to face a difficult trade-off as tariff-driven price increases start to feed through to the inflation data and activity remains soft.”
