Familinomics Index Results/August 2025

Pricing for the August 2025 edition of the Familinomics Index (36 foodstuff items at five unrelated grocers) was completed by August 3. The results for August show a total basket cost of $108.44, up from the initial January basket cost of $106.03; the resulting Index level for the month is 102.27 (January 2025 = 100).

It doesn't seem like much given the hoopla about the impact of the on/off/on/off tariffs being imposed by Donald Trump, but as noted last month, the results are being spoofed by the decline of egg prices. Recall that egg prices were ratcheting upwards because of the supply impact upon flocks caused by spreading Avian Influenza; the cost of a dozen large eggs at the Index outset in January was $4.84 and that subsequently spiked to $7.12 in March. During that period, the Administration brokered a massive importation of eggs from South Korea and Turkey, and the retail price began declining in April. As of July 2025, those dozen eggs had declined to $3.46 and has maintained that price in August. That's a 51% drop in prices in a single four month period (April through July).

What's the upshot of this? The upshot is that egg prices have effectively masked the full activity of the remaining 35 basket items. August's full Index reading was 102.27, but with the exclusion of egg prices from the basket, the Index actually has a reading of 103.74; this is an almost full 1.5 point difference. This is in line with the July Index, in which the inclusion/exclusion of eggs from the basket also led to an almost 1.5 point difference.

We are now several months into the mass deportation sweeps and at the very cusp of the actual imposition of tariffs. What is notable from the August results?

1. For the second month in a row, a major grocer (revenues > $2B) simply had no standard iceberg lettuce available. There were iceberg alternatives available (Romaine, Boston, etc), but the standard stuff was simply gone, without even labels on the shelves. Note that July and August were at the same grocery chain, but two different sites.

2. In keeping with lettuce, there are five fresh produce items within the basket and this segment had an average increase of 6.014% in August. Iceberg lettuce rose by 16.5% and apples rose by 3.1%. There was no change in the cost of a standard 52 ounce container of store brand NFC orange juice, but I anticipate stealth inflation in the near future as a name brand decreased its standard package from 52 to 46 ounces and this will likely filter through to the others.

3. Meat prices began to accelerate as the cost/lb of chicken thighs rose by 13% and ground beef (80% value pack) increased by 8%. This was expected as those respective processing plants are heavily staffed by immigrant workers; a central hub of poultry processing is located in Maryland's rural Delmarva Peninsula and employs a large number of Hispanic and Haitian immigrants. As of last week, a program put in place by the Biden Administration for Haitian workers was allowed to expire with no talk by the Trump Administration of extension. Even if raids are minimized in order to protect that sector, greater absenteeism will certainly have an impact, as has already occurred in the agricultural sectors in Texas, California and Florida.

4. The cost of a gallon of 2% milk dipped slightly by .22% while there was a larger decrease across the other dairy products by an average of 1.45%. I cannot ascertain if this is a statistical blip or attributable to something else.

This project is a reboot of an old Index that I did from 2010 to 2016. I began rebuilding it after the election in November 2024, fully expecting the Administration to begin undermining data and information quality; the base pricing occurred in January 2025.

A hallmark of any authoritarian regime is narrative control and data/information quality is just one aspect of that. For all of the free market rhetoric from the Administration and allies at the Heritage Foundation and GOP, this President will happily shift to command/control points to suit his wishes and narrative. The presentation of a gold whatever by the Apple CEO in appreciation of tariff relief is prima facie evidence of this. It's my concern that as time passes, the Administration will increasingly use situations such as egg imports as a command/control finger on the scale, much as the Little Dutch Boy ran around plugging his fingers in the dike.

Familinomics Basket Results 08/25 (p 1)

Familinomics Basket Results 08/25 (p 2)