In a January 21, LinkedIn post about a 1/19/25 Wall Street Journal Article on food prices rising in December, it was speculated that it is traditional food eating month.  If prices were going to rise in an annual cycle, December would be a good month.  Preparing food is a love language, so sure, prices will likely rise over the year end food-centric celebrations.

The rest of the day, a methodology was hatched to find support for that claim.  If it was true, there should be a 12-month, annual food price cycle.   It turns out there is.  Three observations leap off the chart.

1. For 4o years, CPI urban, food and beverage prices drop in November from October prices.
2. For 40 years, food and beverage prices increase from November to December.
3. And for 40 years, these food and beverage prices reach their highest levels in January.

Stay tuned!  Food prices will go up again when the January CPI values are posted next month in February.  This has happened regardless of the macroeconomic impacts of the decade for four decades.

To begin, Food and beverages in U.S. city average, all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted CPI index values, CUUR0000SAF series, were downloaded from BLS Data Viewer, Bureau of Labor and Statistics.  Monthly, food and beverage price indices were collected back to January 1980.  The monthly change was calculated for each month [(recent month – past month)/past month.].

These were arranged by month for all 44 years.

Moving backwards in time, each monthly index change were averaged for 1o years for the decades,

• 2015-2024
• 2005-2014
• 1995-2004
• 2985-1994

For 40 years, there is a stable cycle of food and beverage prices dropping from October to November and rising from November to December.  This is consistent with the November to December food prices in the Wall Street Journal article.

Most unexpected is an even greater increase in prices from December to January.  With the volatile price activity of the last few years the least amount of increase was experienced in the most recent decade from 2015 to 2024.  This has occurred regardless of macroeconomic activity.