A rise in food prices makes for a less than merry holiday season.

Grocery prices rose 0.4% in November, according to the Consumer Price Index, released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Eggs made one of the biggest jumps at 8.2% over the month, and 37.5% over the past year, providing challenges for people trying to eat a somewhat cheaper protein and families cooking holiday foods such as sugar cookies and challah.

Although the increase in food prices has moderated a bit from past years, they are still more than 20% higher than they were before the pandemic, according to David Ortega, at Michigan State University.

“It was a key issue in the election in terms of people really feeling that sticker shock at the grocery store,” said Ortega, a food economist.

Price changes to understand before you set the holiday table

The increase in grocery, or food at home prices, was partly driven by the rise in egg and beef prices, Ortega said. He said the price of holiday roast has been affected by drought and high feed prices. This year, the inventory of beef cattle was the smallest beef herd since 1951.

“On eggs, the story continues to be bird flu together with increased consumer demand given the holiday season,” he said following Wednesday’s release of the latest Consumer Price Index. “And for beef the issue is supply — high input costs and decisions that beef producers made a couple of years back when they were facing drought and high feed prices which has reduced beef supply, and this in turn is affecting beef prices.”

The latest food price numbers presented a mixed bag for holiday shoppers looking to bake treats this month. Flour and prepared four mixes fell 1% and bread decreased 1.3%, while sugar and sweets rose 0.2%, and butter ticked up 1.5%.

Oranges, including the popular stocking stuffers tangerines, fell 1.8% in the latest Consumer Price Index report.

The rise in cost of eating your meals at home compared to the rise in cost of eating out is also getting narrower, with the gap in inflation between restaurant menu prices and grocery year-over-year prices being the narrowest it has been since May 2023, according to Supermarket News. Food at home in previous reports rose 0.2% and 0.4% compared to 0.2% and 0.3% for the past two food away from home reports.

Are companies profiting off of uncertain times?

Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collective, a left-of-center economic think tank, said that just a few seed producers, meatpackers, and grocers dominate the food industry, which is a key part of the story of what drives grocery prices. This hurts lower-income shoppers the hardest. Oklahoma, Iowa, and Arkansas are some of the states most dominated by a single grocer, such as Walmart or Hy-Vee.

“Across the food and grocery industry, we have a sector that is deeply consolidated,” Mabud said. … And so when you have big companies controlling such large chunks of the market, we know that they have used things like inflation, things like supply chain shocks to jack up prices far beyond what their input costs to justify.”

Mabud said that when there is this level of market concentration, companies can signal to each other in earnings calls that they are going to start raising prices.

“If you know that your only other competitors are also raising prices, there’s kind of no reason for you to try to undercut them if you both hold giant shares of a market,” she said.

A 2024 economic paper found that companies are able to coordinate price increases around cost shocks and increase profits from these events. Mabud said the holidays provide plenty of opportunity for the food industry to raise prices on things people ordinarily don’t buy and don’t have a price comparison for during a less in-demand season.

“Grocers and the food industry kind of know that they know that they have more information about the underlying cost of a good than a consumer who only comes to buy the Christmas ham once a year. And so they can take advantage of that,” she said.

An unhappy new year for grocery shoppers

Economists are watching out for how the next administration will impact food prices.

President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to impose heavy tariffs on the U.S.’s biggest trading partners – Mexico, Canada and China – are expected to drive up the cost of everything, including groceries.

Products the U.S. can’t produce year round, like fruit and coffee, will be affected, Ortega said.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty in terms of whether these tariffs are really going to be implemented or are they a negotiating tool? But that creates a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “Even that amount of uncertainty can lead to a rise in costs as companies prepare for the potential of these tariffs taking place.”

Trump’s expected policy of mass deportation of immigrants will also affect the agriculture industry, in addition to the major human rights implications.

“If there’s a mass deportation that is a shock to the labor supply and the agricultural sector. And that will lead to an increase in costs as producers and companies have to offer higher wages to attract enough labor. Ultimately that gets passed down to the consumer in the form of higher prices,” Ortega said.

Mabud is also concerned that expected tariffs could mean companies take advantage of the policy change well beyond the actual financial impact to their business.

“It’s a policy change where consumers don’t necessarily know how much the price of an avocado is going up because of a tariff versus a supply chain issue versus the grocery store just wanting to increase the price,” she said.

Patricia “Pogo” Overmeyer, 65, who works as a lawyer in Arizona and lives with her retired husband, said she has always been focused on how to save money on groceries. But she said she has become even more thrifty since inflation worsened.

She said she’s been using more meatless meals and stocks up on holiday food all year round when prices are low, some of which she freezes and cans.

“Once I retire, our income will not be as high,” she said, “Most likely I will forgo some foods or make substitutions. It’s anyone’s guess as to what we will be paying for groceries.”

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Americans hand over a huge chunk of their paycheck for a roof over their heads. Policymakers are looking out for indications of what President-elect Donald Trump plans to do to ease housing costs next year after an election where voters were laser-focused on the economy.

Housing accounted for 32.9% of consumers’ spending in 2023, making it the largest share of consumer expenditures, according to the most recently available data Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that was an increase of 5.7% from 2022.

This year, many Americans still struggle to find affordable housing, whether they choose to rent or buy a home.

There’s a lot economists and housing advocates still don’t know about what to expect from a second Trump term. It’s unclear which campaign promises will find their way into administrative rules or legislation, even with a Republican trifecta – the GOP will control the White House and both chambers of Congress.

But policy experts, researchers and economic analysts are looking at Trump’s record, his recent remarks on housing, and Project 2025 – the conservative Heritage Foundation’s 900-page plan to overhaul the executive branch – for a glimpse of what may lie ahead.

Tariffs and the cost of building homes

Trump has spoken frequently of his proposed 60% tariff on goods from China, which he has said would create more manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Tariffs could be as high as 20% on goods from other countries.

But housing economists and other experts say that could be bad news for building more affordable housing.

Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic, a financial services company, said tariffs are one of her main concerns about the effects of a second Trump term.

“One of the biggest concerns is not just lumber [costs], but the overall cost of materials, which have been going up,” said Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic, a financial services company.

Construction material prices have risen 38.8% since February 2020, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors’ analysis of October Producer Price Index data.

Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning in the department of planning and landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said building costs are already high from tariffs on Canadian lumber that Trump first imposed and that the Biden administration kept and increased.

“It used to be in construction that you would get a bid from a contractor or a subcontractor or supplier and it would be good for 60 days. Now, the bids are good for like five days because you don’t know where prices are going to be,” he said.

Immigration policy and its effect on construction labor

Trump tweeted on Nov. 18 that he is planning to use the declaration of a national emergency as part of his mass deportation plan.

Besides disrupting lives, Trump’s plan could have effects on what it costs to build housing, Hepp said.

“There is the cost of labor as well, if we do indeed have all these deportations. That’s a big, big concern,” she said. “A large share of labor in the construction industry obviously comes from immigrants. That is a huge issue for new construction and particularly new construction as it relates to affordable housing.”

Foreign-born construction workers made up 3 million of the 11.9 million people who work in the construction industry in 2023, according to the latest American Community Survey data.

Trump’s ‘not in my backyard’ rhetoric

The former president hasn’t always been clear on where he stands with zoning regulations and making way for more affordable housing in a wide variety of neighborhoods.

In a July Bloomberg interview, Trump spoke critically of zoning regulations and said that they drive up housing costs. But Trump also has a record of tending toward a “not in my backyard,” or NIMBY, approach to housing that maintained some of these zoning regulations. The Trump administration moved to roll back an Obama-era regulation that tied HUD funding to assessing and reducing housing discrimination in neighborhoods.

“He’ll talk about reducing regulations on developers, but he’ll also use this NIMBYism talking about protecting suburbs from low-income housing and you really can’t have it both ways,” said Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of public policy and field organizing at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Paulsen said Project 2025 embraces a pushback against anti-NIMBY approaches to expand multi-family housing.

“What I read in the Project 2025 documents is a clear statement that says every local community and neighborhood should be able to choose the housing it wants to accept or not. The challenge of that is that if every community in every neighborhood can veto housing, then we just don’t get enough housing and prices go up and prices and rents go up,” he said.

A more punitive approach to homelessness

Last year, homelessness rose to its highest level recorded since the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began collecting this information in 2007. The ending of pandemic safety nets that gave some households better financial stability and a lack of affordable housing supply contributed to the number of unhoused people, the report explained.

Trump has been outspoken on his view that homeless people should be “off our streets.” The president-elect has also proposed putting unhoused people with mental health issues into “mental institutions.”

“There’s a movement that I think is largely reflected in Project 2025 that says, actually, cities need more coercive policy tools to enforce public order and to require that someone who’s camping take a shelter placement even if they don’t want it,” Paulsen said.

Saadian said that given the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which makes it easier to criminalize unhoused populations for sleeping outside, she’s worried about a changing political environment where policies that prioritize stable housing over policing fall out of favor.

“I think all of that just shows a culture shift in the political dynamic here that we’re definitely worried about,” she said.

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The economy is top of mind for caregiver and driver Jennifer Garner as the U.S. heads toward the November presidential election.

Garner, 46, lives in Cleveland and can bring in about $800 a week working extra hours at both jobs. But between debt payments on $56,000 in student loans and $1,300 in rent — among other monthly bills — the money doesn’t go far enough.

She voted for Biden in 2020, but says now that she’s researching other candidates — although she has ruled out former President Donald Trump.

Black voters overwhelmingly supported President Joe Biden in 2020 and were key to his win, but as many like Garner struggle to make ends meet now, there is some evidence that Black voter enthusiasm for Biden may be slipping. And Trump is hoping to capitalize on that. He spoke last month at a meeting of the Black Conservative Federation and he argues that Black voters were better off financially when he was in office. Even if Black voters don’t buy that message, voters’ frustration could result in them turning to a third party candidate, Cornell Belcher, a pollster who worked for Barack Obama, told The New York Times.

To counter Trump, the Biden campaign is spending millions on radio ads in swing states at Black-owned and Latino-owned radio stations to point out the administration’s accomplishments, including investments in historically Black colleges and universities through grant funding and the American Rescue Plan Act, the cancellation of student loan debt for 3.9 million borrowers, and reducing Black child poverty in 2021, which it has connected to the then expansion of the child tax credit.

“I have to work two jobs overtime just to even try to cover my rent, which means I have no time to be able to enjoy life, period,” Garner said. “The only way things are going to get better is if people start talking and just let them know the economy sucks. We need better jobs and more money.”

According to a January NBC News poll, 75% of Black voters said they would vote for Biden in the general election this year. In 2020, 92% of Black voters cast their votes for Biden, a Pew Research Center report shows. This criticism of the economy lines up with surveys about Black voters’ financial experiences.

A May 2023 report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that 30% of Black people said their financial situation had worsened over the past year, compared to 44% who said it had stayed the same. Although key economic indicators that economists look to to understand the state of the economy have shown a stable labor market, slowing inflation, and rising wages, it’s clear that many Black voters are still feeling the financial pressure of high prices at the grocery store, an expensive housing market, and the burden of student debt payments restarting.

On Monday, Biden announced another student debt relief proposal to cancel accrued interest for 23 million borrowers, with up to 25 million receiving some kind of interest cancellation. Under this new plan, 4 million borrowers would also have their student debt canceled entirely and 10 million borrowers could benefit from $5,000 in relief. It’s unclear when exactly the Biden administration will release a formal proposal.

Keisha Deonarine, director of opportunity, race and justice at the NAACP, shares the frustrations many Black voters say they have with the financial burden of student debt. She said before Biden’s Monday announcement that the president needs to push harder to cancel student debt to have a lasting impact on the economic experiences of Black Americans and many other voters.

“If we really want to think about four-year degrees and we want to think about middle class America, we’ve got to cancel student debt,” she said.

Deonarine said she’s encouraged by the Biden administration’s work to reduce and provide more transparency on junk fees, however, which includes regulations to reduce credit card late fees. She said that could help reduce costs that put stress on voters’ household budgets.

Audrianna Lewis at a rally outside of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in December 2023. (Photo courtesy of the Communications Workers of America Union)

Audrianna Lewis, who voted for Biden in 2020, is one of those voters. She has to budget for high rent and healthcare costs.

Lewis, 32, works in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as a customer service representative for Maximus, a government contractor that helps administer Medicaid, Medicare and other programs. She makes $17.78 an hour and has about $9,000 in student debt. Her rent has gone up from $860 last year to $1,000 this year.

On top of her climbing rent and student debt, Lewis has asthma and said her health care doesn’t sufficiently cover her breathing treatments, which has required her to go into her savings. She said her coworkers are also struggling financially.

“Some of my coworkers are homeless,” she said. “People are not able to pay for doctor visits and prescriptions.”

In March of last year, Black people’s unemployment rate hit a record low and the economic recovery shows that by historical standards, Black and Hispanic workers have had faster wage growth these past few years. The unemployment rate for Black people has begun to tick up again, but economists say they’re waiting for more data before considering it a long lasting trend.

But Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, said the unemployment rate for Black Americans does not tell the whole story.

“The other part of that message has to do with, ‘OK, I may be employed but I’m still working three jobs just to pay my rent,’” she said.

Sarah Wallace, 49, a Philadephian who lives on Social Security Disability Insurance, says she has to spend the lion’s share of it on $1,500 in rent each month. She voted for Biden in 2020, but said she may vote third party this time.

“I think Biden sold all of us on his dream to get into the office … And that was that,” she said.

Wallace said she doesn’t believe the economy has improved under Biden and that she doesn’t see inflation easing enough to make a difference for her at the grocery store.

“Buying food, you’re never buying the most healthy [food] because they’re more expensive. So you kind of have to improvise what you can do, you know?” she said.

Wallace, who has more than $200,000 in student debt and said she struggles to get Ozempic to treat her diabetes, wants to see political leaders do more on student debt relief and make health care more affordable and accessible.

Workforce data from 2021 shows that 48% of frontline workers at Maximus — where Lewis, of Mississippi, is employed — are Black and Latina women.

Although Lewis said her pay is better under Biden than it was when Donald Trump was president, she said she still isn’t sure if she’s voting for Biden. Although like Garner, the Cleveland caregiver, she ruled out voting for Trump, she hasn’t ruled out voting for someone other than Biden.

Garner, who is civically engaged as a member organizer through One Fair Wage, a group that wants to end subminimum wages, said she wasn’t “leaning towards anybody just yet.”

Garner said that although she knows the courts have stopped Biden from moving forward with his more ambitious student debt cancellation plan, she wants to see him do more on the issue and other financial burdens she faces.

“Don’t tell me what you’re going to do. Show me what you’re going to do,” she said.

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