Why eggs are selling for over $9 a dozen in some places—and when prices are expected to drop

The media is just never willing to admit that price gouging is always a great big factor.

- What good would telling the truth do? Really?

I'm sure putting an anti-vaxxer in charge of health care will solve all problems in no time.

Elon has a plan to hire H1B workers that can lay more eggs than the average american worker
- Nobody wants to lay eggs any more!

when prices are expected to drop

Keep it up, media. Let's make sure people notice that shit doesn't actually go down.

The real problem will be when the media stops reporting on prices altogether.

Well eggs are going to go down, because there's a specific cause for those to be particularly high right now. It has nothing to do with Biden and the recovery will have nothing to do with Trump, but that will be the timeline, for eggs specifically.
- It might come down a bit. Look at all the price hikes since 2019, prices are not going to come down.

Why is everyone so obsessed with eggs? Do people really eat them that often and if so, is it some kind of addiction like coffee or what? Stop paying those prices, stop buying the damn eggs.

Eggs are also used in a lot of baked goods. If you're cooking at home and making a lot of things from scratch, eggs are common ingredients. In addition to that they're also an excellent source of protein that doesn't require any forethought or planning to just make in minutes. My husband and I go through a dozen every 7-10 days depending on what I'm making. That's not a ton, but considering most grocery prices are up it's frustrating. I can cut back on a lot of things, and I can make alternative recipes that don't include eggs for a lot of things, but then those things have a different texture, less protein, or can't exist at all. I'm already cooking nearly everything from scratch at home to save money as it is. Not buying eggs is a bigger sacrifice than many realize, especially for someone that loves to bake.
- Yep, the only time I buy eggs is if I'm going to be baking things that require them, which I don't do very often. I just get the 6-pack, then any remaining after baking usually sit forgotten in the fridge for weeks and then I'm not sure if they're still edible so they go to waste. 🤷
Cheap protein. Generally the cheapest protein in the store.
- Beans are cheaper
  And magical fruit
Eggs are interesting because they are generally a very cheap food for what they are. If you can't afford to spend much on food, eggs are generally still within your reach. Without cheap eggs the options for nutrition for people without much money are significantly curtailed.
They also drive news because they have dramatic surges with bird flu, which happens every few years.
Unlike other products, they tend to recover from the surge prices to reset things so the next surge still looks dramatic.
Man I love eggs. They are so versatile and easy to cook. Boiled eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs... Easy hot meal and a decent bit of protein in like 10 minutes. Breakfast lunch or dinner.
I wonder if a lot of the price increases are due to things like people paying more for free range and cage free eggs and then the companies selling caged eggs and regular cruelty-guaranteed eggs think they can sell their eggs for more since the other eggs are so much more.
If your competition is selling for $8 a dozen no one is going to notice much if your $2 a dozen goes up to $4 a dozen since it still looks good beside the $8 a dozen carton
It's 90% due to delicious breakfast tacos
Eggs aren't a large part of my current diet, mostly because I am not cooking in the morning often right now, but there was a time when they were very cost effective. Where I was living about a decade ago they were about $1.70 per dozen, and I ate probably a little over a dozen a week. If I was still in that mode; seeing a dozen eggs for $9 would definitely stop me buying them, throw my meal planning into a bit of chaos and tick me off.

The Japanese are mad because 10 eggs are getting close to ¥300 ($1.91).

I buy higher quality eggs and I only pay ~¥250 for 10.

(Japan doesn’t do anything by the dozen.)

Now rice… that’s gotten out of control here in the past few months. Some companies now charging 3 times what they did just last summer.

I get the XL free-range eggs from the farm shop here, and they are 50-60ct apiece. And they are worth each and every cent. Last week, all eight eggs in the box were double yolk.

The biggest factor pushing up egg prices is a wave of avian flu, which began in early 2022 and led to the culling of millions of egg-laying hens. With demand remaining steady, the reduced supply has caused prices to rise.

Supply and demand, folks. Supply and demand. Demand high, supply low? Price goes up. Supply high, demand low, prices goes down.

While prices are expected to ease from late 2024 highs, they will likely stay above pre-outbreak levels through 2025.

Or indefinitely. Once people get used to paying a higher price for eggs, what's to stop the stores from keeping the prices relatively high, even if the wholesale price goes down? If a store can increase their profit margins on eggs, why wouldn't they? Especially if the store is a large corporation, always looking to maximize profit and return for shareholders.

Some people might say, "competition will bring the price down. Once one store lowers their price to gain a competitive edge, other stores will have to follow or risk losing customers." To this I say: who the hell comparison shops for eggs? Look, I'm sure some people do, but, if most people are like me, they're not going to multiple stores to see who has the lowest price for a dozen eggs. I go to one store, my favorite store, and I just get the same eggs I'm used to getting. Even if I did want to comparison shop, not all stores are going to sell my preferred eggs (I know a lot of people will say, eggs are eggs, but I like cage free eggs even though it's probably bullshit I like to think my eggs aren't coming from chickens who are stuffed into those little wire cages all day), so it would be hard to do an apples to apples comparison.

Plus, as more and more stores become consolidated into fewer and fewer major retailer chains, even the theoretical idea of price regulation through competition goes out the window.

This is what we get when we essentially live under monopoly control or pseudo-monopolies created via collusion.

Quiz:

That's okay, I can wait while the greedy middlemen jerk each other off over the flimsy excuse of avian flu. I refuse to pay over $2/dozen on eggs and I'm being generous with that limit. Would be interesting to understand why the value line of this chart rocketed up so hard while production didn't drop anywhere close to such a dramatic degree:

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Poultry/eggprvl.php

$2 / dozen?
I pay about $12 / dozen after conversion because I can't imagine a lower price covering cost that allows any decent kind of life for the chickens.
How, after all costs, should $2 / dozen even work outside of the most horrible conditions?
- My reference point is based on US prices for regular eggs, probably produced under those horrible conditions. I would pay more for eggs from chickens raised under better conditions, but it's hard to tell if it's actually the case or if it's just marketing BS because of all the loopholes that companies can exploit to qualify while still providing poor conditions.