Groceries that rose in price in Massachusetts last month

FILE PHOTO: Carved slices of ham folding on top of one another. (Getty Images)

by: Stacker

Posted: Sep 30, 2023 / 07:00 AM EDT

Updated: Sep 28, 2023 / 11:25 AM EDT

After more than a year of historical inflation, grocery prices are staying relatively steady. Prices fell in March and April for the first time since September 2020 and have changed little since. In August, the cost of groceries inflated 0.2% over July prices.

The drop earlier this spring was largely fueled by decreases in eggs—which had risen dramatically in price—as well as meats, fruits and vegetables, and dairy products.

The overall cost of groceries in August remained up 3% from 2022 after historically high inflation in the past couple of years following a series of major social and economic events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, labor disruptions, and heightened consumer demand. Overall, inflation has finally somewhat cooled after continuous interest rate hikes from the Fed, and grocery inflation appears to be doing the same.

Despite the lull, groceries in some categories continued to climb. Stacker used monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find the grocery items that experienced the largest price increases over the last month in the Northeast, using year-over-year changes as a tiebreaker where needed. For this analysis, the Northeast includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Stacker excluded some hyper-specific meat categories in order to better understand grocery price fluctuations more broadly.