Omelets are back on the menu! After nearly doubling in price late last year and early this year, the price of eggs nosedived in May, according to the Labor Department.
The latest consumer price index not only reported the lowest inflation rate in roughly two years, it highlighted a 13.8% decrease in the price of eggs. That’s the largest decline since 1951.
Overall, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 1.2% in May.
The egg price drop is welcome news for consumers, who saw prices hit $4.25 per dozen last December after an avian flu outbreak forced farmers to slaughter more than 43 million egg-laying birds. Higher feed costs, along with fuel and labor expenses, also impacted the item.
Eggs were the outlier to inflation, continuing to rise, even as the overall number went down, which makes the May report such welcome news. At one point, consumers were smuggling eggs across the Mexican border to keep costs down.
“We are seeing an increase in people attempting to cross eggs from Juárez to El Paso because they are significantly less expensive in Mexico than the U.S.,” Roger Maier, a public affairs official with the Customs and Border Protection office, told Fortune in January.
Other consumers rushed to buy live chickens to keep their budgets in check, which caused more problems for hatcheries, as they were unable to buy replacements for the birds they were forced to slaughter.
Food prices are, along with energy prices, the most volatile part of the inflation picture, often rising or falling sharply in short periods. And while overall inflation was up just 4%, core inflation (which excludes food and energy) was up 5.3%, which means consumers aren’t yet seeing significant relief.
