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Has anything gotten cheaper? We shopped at Walmart to find the answer
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LIBERTY COUNTY, Ga. — Think back a year. Do you feel like anything in your supermarket cart has gotten cheaper?
Overall, inflation has cooled for about two years in the United States. That means prices, generally, have been rising less. Some have even declined. But what does that look like when you go shopping?
Since 2018, NPR has tracked prices at the Walmart here. It's a bustling suburban superstore — what you think of when you think of Walmart. On the most recent visit, in December, I had a new goal: to see, literally, how many of the 96 items on my list had gotten cheaper over the past year. To do this, I would buy everything on the list that has declined in price.
In the produce aisle, I grab the first item: a bag of red seedless grapes. The grapes have changed brands over time and dropped in price by 20%. Into my cart they go, soon followed by bananas from Guatemala and garlic from Peru, as well as an American-grown white onion and a sweet potato of unlisted origin.
I start feeling optimistic.
Walmart's CEO has touted his chain's push to lower prices on 6,000 items, half of which are groceries. The largest U.S. retailer has the scale to extract the best deals from suppliers. And it has negotiated temporary price rollbacks with many brands. That includes Ocean Spray, whose big jug of cranberry juice lands in my cart because its price declined 12% over a year.
Not quite so fast
But historically, prices rarely drop in the long run. It's more typical for them to rise or stay flat, while our wages rise also and help us catch up. In the meantime, our brains tend to focus on the price hikes. And I still spot them in most aisles of this superstore.
Over and over, I pick up an item just to return it to the shelf because of its higher cost: a bag of Lay's potato chips, a jar of Pace salsa.
When asked about their price increases, Lay's and Pace didn't comment. Walmart, in a statement, said it was "committed to providing an Every Day Low Price experience … with the goal of having the lowest price on a basket of goods over time."
Other big brands sent statements to NPR pointing to their own higher costs: fertilizer, packaging, shipping, wages. Jif cited pricier peanuts; Yoplait, pricier milk for its yogurt. The global cocoa shortage has Lindt and Hershey raising prices. Avian flu has hiked the cost of eggs.
A silver lining, sort of
Through most of the aisles, I find myself muttering the same phrase: "Not cheaper." Or: "Same price."
Spoiler alert: I find that exactly half the items on my list cost the same as they did a year ago. This doesn't feel like good news, though it can be; prices staying stable is a notable relief from the constant climb of recent years.
And then, there are price changes so small that you blink and you miss them. A bottle of Tropicana orange juice appears to cost the same as a year ago, but a closer inspection reveals the bottle is smaller by 6 ounces, in a classic case of shrinkflation.
Tropicana didn't comment. But shrinkflation is why I look at the price per unit: focusing on the cost of an ounce of juice in that bottle, rather than the total price tag.
At one point, this gets me into a dilemma, holding a roll of Reynolds Wrap nonstick aluminum foil.
The foil is cheaper by 63 cents. But per square foot, the savings comes out to less than a cent. Does it even count? I seek help from a fellow shopper.
"I don't think so, but you know, it may add up after so many," says Pat Perkins, shopping for some bread and coffee. "We better take what we can get nowadays. Every little bit adds up."
This approach means more things for my shopping cart. In go bags of flour and sugar, down by only a cent or two per pound, plus Russet potatoes and honey.
From the seafood freezer, I grab a 2-pound bag of pink salmon, cheaper by 25% than it was a year earlier. In the meat section, I score boneless pork chops, down by 23%. The first and only item not related to food to go into my shopping cart is a yoga mat, at a 19% price decrease from a year before.
At checkout, it's time to tally up the loot: I'm walking out of this Walmart with 21 items. That means just over a fifth of my shopping list got cheaper over the course of the year.
No orange juice, milk or eggs, but I've got bagels, fruit and oatmeal for breakfast. And for dinner, I'm having beans, potatoes and an odd surf-and-turf of salmon and pork — to be roasted on foil.
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Graphics by Juweek Adolphe/NPR
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