It is Not Just the Macy's Balloons that will be Inflated for Thanksgiving
Here is a look at what inflation is really doing to the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner, despite some of what you may have read.
I struggled in the past few weeks to make sense of the headlines I was seeing about Thanksgiving dinner being less expensive this year. I was certain they were fake news, so I didn’t even read them and didn’t post them, but didn’t have time to look into them. Today, however, I came across a few headlines finally saying exactly what I expected to see, so I’m publishing them all right here so you can see how the news has changed:
Cost of Thanksgiving Dinner Declines
What will a Thanksgiving dinner cost you this year? It may be cheaper
Thanksgiving meal costs drop 2% to 3% this year
How much a ‘classic’ Thanksgiving dinner will cost you—it’s cheaper than last year
Food prices are up, but the cost of Thanksgiving might not be
Thanksgiving Dinner Will Cost You Significantly More This Year—Here’s Why
Thanksgiving dinner costs by the numbers reveal what’s cheaper, what’s still pricey
And now I can explain what was happening with the baloney on turkey prices and overall dinner prices. Some early articles were saying that the price of turkeys was down. I knew that could not be true because bird flu has wiped so many out, while prices of food are generally a lot worse. So, here’s what’s happening:
Many stores are doing what they often do before Thanksgiving—selling turkeys as loss leaders to get people in the store to buy groceries. This year they are going a little deeper with the losses, but everything else costs enough more that, even with the big savings on turkey, your dinner will be more expensive, depending on what source you read. While the price of turkeys has gone up for the stores, the price of turkey at the store for you, has gone down as a limited-time promotion because the turkeys are competing to get you in the door.
You might want to note that most of the articles about lower prices sourced their information from a farm advocacy group called American Farm Bureau Federation. Naturally, they will be happy to tell you the stores are charging less in hopes that you’ll put on a big spread from the farm. Other studies show otherwise.
The AFBF showed the average cost nationwide of a Thanksgiving dinner at $55.18 this year. They place that price down 5% from last year. Of course, your cost depends on how many average people you are feeding and whether you live in an average part of the country.
The estimates come from the farm advocacy group’s annual price survey, conducted in the first week of November and based on volunteer shoppers in all 50 states checking grocery store prices for the same Thanksgiving staples each year.
The biggest cost is the [16 lb] turkey at an average of $21.50.
They don’t tell you that the biggest cost would be a lot bigger if the stores those shoppers shopped at were not taking larger losses on the turkeys this year.
Another article that said the cost of a Thanksgiving meal was down gave some additional insight:
According to a new report from the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, despite a 2.7% increase of “food-at-home” prices in 2025 as measured by the Consumer Price Index, the overall cost of a Thanksgiving menu is decreasing this year by about 2% to 3%, “depending on the shopper’s strategy.”
“At the heart of the uptick in the CPI’s food-at-home increase is protein, specifically beef and eggs, which are not on the Thanksgiving menu,” the report states. “Without those items, consumers will find relief in a traditional Thanksgiving meal.”
So, another aspect is that the traditional meal happens to focus on very basic foods that are not processed and happens to focus on the foods that are cheapest right now. The Agri-Food Institute’s meal for ten if you buy the store brands comes to $80 and will cost $95 if you shop for name brands.
One article found the price to be higher still:
“We find that the typical Thanksgiving meal will run people about 10% more this year,” said Elizabeth Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy the economic thinktank Groundwork Collaborative….
Here’s the thing: Food prices overall are up. “For vegetables, specifically, our veggie tray was up more than 61% and sweet potatoes were up 37%,” the American Farm Bureau’s Parum said….
Yes, even the AFBF said that, so it is clearly the turkey that makes the difference:
Some stores are willing to take a hit on the turkey, said Pancotti at Groundwork Collaborative.
“They can put those prices in the paper or in online advertisements to get you in the door, and then they know that you will buy the pumpkin pie filling, and the green beans, and the stuffing,” she said.
In which case, really, the big savings is on the bird that is being sold at a loss. Otherwise, you are certainly right if you think food has become a lot more expensive this year.
And one article says the prices will be a lot higher this year:
Last year, the average price of Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people was $58.08 (about $5.80 per person), according to the American Farm Bureau Federation—a decrease from the prior two years. This year, Empower estimates a dinner for 10 people at $73.09 (about $7.31 per person), a nearly 26% price increase from last year. Conflicting reports peg the 2025 cost at $55.18 (a 5% decrease), but a closer look at Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggests otherwise. There’s a lot of conflicting information floating around about Thanksgiving prices this year, so always double-check your sources before you plan.
So, that’s what I did, and my conclusion is that it’s going to come down to how large of a loss the store you buy your turkey at is willing to take on the turkey. The article that said you’d pay a lot more this year did not factor in the promotional losses stores would be willing to take on turkeys. They went by …
Purdue University’s College of Agriculture’s Center for Food Demand Analysis & Sustainability predicts an average of $2.05 per pound—a roughly 25% increase from last year’s prices.
That is what turkey would have gone up to if priced normally.
Other reports even put turkey prices at a 40% increase from last year! This is not only due to inflation; supply issues tied to bird flu have also tightened the market.
As I figured would surely have to be the case.
One article said it succinctly right in the title:
Stores offer discounted turkeys to get customers in the door, but other Thanksgiving foods may cost more
Google’s AI Search Assist said,
The cost of Thanksgiving meals has increased this year, with some reports indicating an overall rise of about 18% compared to last year, largely due to inflation and supply chain issues. While turkey prices have seen some discounts, other staples like sweet potatoes and butter have significantly increased in price.
If the search engine AI isn’t lying, as it often does, we know where the inflation and supply-chain troubles came from—tariffs. Predictable, although denied all along the way by the government.
So, there you go!
The steal recession uncloaks
I’ve also struggled to make sense of government claims that prices were dropping and that the economy was strong and particularly government jobs reports where everyone else reports look much worse. I never bought the lie, and more reports came in today showing how wrong the government has been:
The non-government Consumer Conference Board publishes The Consumer Confidence Index, which showed confidence in November dropped 6.8 points from October to hit its lowest reading in seven months, and the primary reason given was worry about being able to find another job. Hardly something that would be true if the Bureau of Labor Statistics had been lying when it atypically reported a fall-off in jobs before it went out of business during the government shutdown. Prior to that its reports had been too optimistic. Getting real, however, cost the head of the bureau her job.
Consumers know better. They’re no longer buying the old government BS:
Consumers soured on the current economy and their prospects for the future, with worries growing over the ability to find a job, according to a Conference Board survey released Tuesday….
“Consumers were notably more pessimistic about business conditions six months from now,” said Dana Peterson, the board’s chief economist. “Mid-2026 expectations for labor market conditions remained decidedly negative, and expectations for increased household incomes shrunk dramatically, after six months of strongly positive readings.”
The stealth recession is now becoming visible to everyone.
On this same day, the payroll processing firm ADP reported another negative number for the change in jobs available— -13,500 per week averaged over the past four weeks.
With the government shutdown still impacting data releases, alternative information like ADP’s has been filling in the blanks on the economic picture.
So, we’re getting more focus on more truthful numbers, and that is starting to create a chill in the hearts of consumers.
Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, said in a client note Sunday…
When the releases do start rolling out … he expects that “alternative indicators show renewed job losses in October” even though the BLS last week reported better-than-expected 119,000 growth in payrolls for September.
The BLS was lying.
With other non-government entities being leaned on, the lie is becoming more obvious.
(I will be taking a vacation through the rest of the week for Thanksgiving travels, so I will pause all subscriptions so that the idle days are not subtracted from the days you have paid for. I’ll restart the clock on all subscription when I get back to work. You should still be able to access all past articles during that time. Let me know if you find you can’t.)