Familinomics Price Index: May/June
- Don Harrold
- Jun 17
- 3 min read
Yeah, it's starting to get eggsciting at the grocery store.
The May and June Indices are here together, although the May data was collected between May 1 and 5. The indices for May and June declined from April's 103.83 (January 2025 = 100) to 102.31 and then to 101.69 respectively. This certainly fits the Trump Administration's comments that prices are stable, but things are unclear behind the facade, and it all goes back to the situation with egg prices.
If you recall, egg prices were the poster child of price chatter as the price of eggs skyrocketed through the first quarter of 2025. Egg producers lost about 50 million hens since 2024's fourth quarter and the Administration struck egg import deals with both South Korea and Turkey; Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins expected that the imported amount would be in the realm of hundreds of millions of eggs. This process began in March 2025 and it began to show quickly, with the price of a dozen large eggs declining from a March high of $7.12 (average at five unrelated local grocery stores) to $5.38 in April. By the most recent pricing in early June, it had plummeted to $3.82 at those same five stores.
And here's the problem: The Familinomics Index is a great data point, but simply not as comprehensive as the information coming out of the Consumer Price Index compiled by the Department of Commerce. What happens when the CPI is sufficiently degraded (or even manipulated) and we are left with small indices?
That's the question as I looked at the data. The Familinomics Index can be spoofed by the activity of one basket item, which are, in this case, eggs. How is the egg component hiding what's occurring in the rest of the 36 item basket? To answer this, I re-calculated the information to respond to two questions:
What is the Familinomics Index with a dozen large eggs removed from the sample basket?
What is the Familinomics Index without the Administration's action of arranging a mass import of eggs (keeping the March high static moving forward to June)?
So, here's a different look. The first two rows show the nominal results and Index for all data. The second two rows reflect the nominal and Index results with eggs removed. The final two rows reflect the data with egg prices held at their apex reached in March, 2025 (absent government intervention).
Jan 25 | Feb 25 | Mar 25 | Apr 25 | May 25 | Jun 25 | |
Base ($) | 106.03 | 108.38 | 109.59 | 110.09 | 108.48 | 107.82 |
Index | 100 | 102.22 | 103.36 | 103.83 | 102.31 | 101.69 |
Base ($) no egg | 101.19 | 102.49 | 102.47 | 104.71 | 103.81 | 104.00 |
Index (no egg) | 100 | 101.28 | 101.26 | 103.48 | 102.59 | 102.77 |
Base (no imports) | 106.03 | 108.38 | 109.59 | 110.09 | 110.93 | 111.12 |
Index (no imports) | 100 | 102.22 | 103.36 | 105.47 | 104.62 | 104.80 |
The big takeaways here?
The President's "Liberation Day" on April 2 served as a systemic shock to pricing. Even though the cost of eggs had declined (from March's $7.12 to April's $5.38) by 24% in one month, the egg-free Index (row 4) exploded by more than 2 full points, from March's 101.26 to 103.48. The decline in egg prices masked the shock to everything else from the uncertainty arising from the highly inconsistent tariff levels.
Grocers and wholesalers pulled back afterwards as the Index (in all three iterations) pulled back from the April high; again, the 46% nosedive in egg prices masked everything else. After the May drop, the non-egg Index again rose.
Had there not been government intervention to arrange mass egg importation, the Index would be significantly higher. Assuming that the March high of $7.12 was even constant, the non-intervention Index would be more than three points higher at 104.80.
When then-candidate Donald Trump talked about his admiration for the late 19th century, one of the little known facts of that period was the utter absence of economic data. Indices like this can provide valuable information about the direction and velocity of prices, but they are simply not a systemic replacement for governmental efforts like the CPI. Which is, come to think of it, a plus if you want to make the looting of the economy easier.
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