Ahead of Thanksgiving, media outlets across the political spectrum blared headlines warning that this year’s holiday meal will be more expensive. These stories weren’t incorrect — but they did leave out crucial context that shows things aren’t so bad after all.
The news stories claimed that Thanksgiving dinner would cost 14% more this time around. With the price of turkey in particular up 25%, they warned the average holiday meal for 10 people would cost $53.31, a $6.41 increase from last year. The source for these bombastic stories was a survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation. And these numbers aren’t wrong. They just make things sound worse than they actually are.
It’s misleading to focus just on sticker prices of what a Thanksgiving meal costs when what really matters is how much of your purchasing power it consumes. If sticker prices have risen but wages have as well, then it’s not actually “more expensive” in the most meaningful sense.
Analysts Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley at HumanProgress.org examined how Thanksgiving meal prices have changed in terms of real purchasing power. They found that this year, it will cost the typical person 2.03 hours of work to pay for Thanksgiving dinner, compared to 1.88 hours last year. That’s still an increase, yes, but it’s a 7% increase — half the stated 14% increase.
It has been a difficult year for most people, and our analysis is not meant to belittle the hardship that Americans have endured since the start of the pandemic.
But doom and gloom are not our friends either. https://t.co/Wr56wkWosz
— HumanProgress.org (@HumanProgress) November 22, 2021
So, just as a statistical matter, the real increase in Thanksgiving costs is just half what the media narrative would suggest. It’s still a significant increase and burden, of course, and not the direction we’d like to see things heading in.
Yet zooming out beyond 2020 — an outlier year for sure — reveals that this year’s Thanksgiving prices are hardly disastrous. Again in real purchasing terms, HumanProgress.org finds that this year’s meal will be cheaper than it was in 2019 for the average person. And this year’s meal is much cheaper, in real terms, than it was in 2010, 2000, or even 1986.
This graph by HumanProgress.org shows quite clearly how this year’s prices are only a slight uptick in an otherwise heartening trend:
Like me, you might’ve seen media headlines screaming about how expensive this year’s Thanksgiving dinner is going to be for Americans.
This great @HumanProgress graph puts those stories in context and reveals no cause for alarm. pic.twitter.com/eheO9Bk0Ja
— Brad Polumbo ??⚽️ ?️? (@brad_polumbo) November 24, 2021
This is good news! So, don’t let depressing headlines ruin your Thanksgiving meal. Enjoy an extra slice of pie — and don’t worry too much about how much extra it supposedly cost.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and a Washington Examiner contributor. Subscribe to his YouTube channel or email him at [email protected].
