Shuttered restaurants and efforts to cook more meals at home amid coronavirus-linked shutdowns have shoved meat, poultry, fish, fruit, and vegetable prices dramatically higher in the Bay Area, a federal report released Tuesday shows.
At the same time that products for home-cooked meals have become more costly, decreased driving largely due to the business shutdowns imposed by state and local government agencies has caused gasoline prices to plummet.
The trends were revealed Tuesday as part of the latest reports on the consumer price index for the nation, the Bay Area, and other regions that were released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overall, inflation as measured by the consumer price index remains tame in the Bay Area.
During the one-year period that ended in June, consumer prices rose just 1.6 percent in the region. That sort of annual increase for the Bay Area inflation rate is generally viewed as relatively modest.
The inflation picture, however, varies drastically, depending on specific activities and products that consumers are buying.
Overall food prices, which includes restaurants, fast food and eating at home, have risen by 6.2 percent over the 12 months that ended in June, which means that the annualized pace of food costs rose nearly four times as fast as the overall inflation rate.
But the price for food consumed at home has jumped at an even greater rate.
April marked a major increase in the cost of food at home, which correlated to the first full month of business shutdowns and the trend of people staying at home.
Measured on an annual basis, food costs at home increased by 6.7 percent in April compared to the same month in 2019, 6.9 percent in May, and 7.7 percent in June compared with June the year before.
In contrast, the annual rate of increase for food at home during the first three months of 2020 averaged just 0.7 percent.
And the prices for certain types of food have skyrocketed.
Meat, poultry, and fish prices during the one-year period that ended in June soared by a head-spinning 19.4 percent, the federal report showed. That’s a sharp upswing from the already high annualized rate of increase of 14.5 percent that was recorded in April, which was the prior time this price index was measured.
Fruit and vegetable prices also are elevated. Fruits and vegetables in the Bay Area cost 4.9 percent more in June than they did during the same month in 2019.
Gasoline prices are still dramatically cheaper than they were a year ago.
Over the 12 months that ended in June, the price for unleaded regular gasoline fell 21.9 percent.
During the two most recent months from April through June, the overall inflation rate increased by 0.7 percent.
Food prices increased by 2.7 percent during the two most recent months, while food costs rose 3.1 percent, and prices of food away from home rose 2.4 percent.
