Tracking prices: eggs, milk and gas

Tracking prices over the next few months or years will be interesting, due to its heavy influence during the election. I will be looking into egg, milk and gas prices and maybe add housing costs. I got this idea from somewhere as someone expressed interest in seeing the data and how people respond to what may transpire over the next few months.

I might add housing prices since that is one of the larger expenses regular people have.

I began with Excel and Power Query but also moved over to Power BI just to maintain my skillset with that tool.

It will be interesting to see if those prices actually decline, although with the deportation and tariff threats, it could very well go the opposite way.

I believe all data comes from FRED.

Egg Prices

On the left side is a graph and table of data created using Power BI. It is showing monthly egg prices since 1980. The deeper blue shading in the chart in image 1 represents Trump years.

The chart and table data on the right is a closer look at the data since July 2024.

Right away we can see that egg prices have been rising rather steeply since 2021, the era of Covid.

Milk Prices

Same layout with overview of milk prices on left and then a closer look on the right.

With milk, we can see that milk has been increasing since 2018 during the Trump years. That’s an interesting data point.

Gasoline Prices

Again, we see gas prices rising during Trump years, specifically since May 2020. So far, both milk and gasoline do not provide clear evidence that inflation was persuading voters to look elsewhere for solutions to their kitchen item problems.

The year of tracking prices

With the eggs, I kind of get why people voted in Trump due to inflation, but the milk and gas upward trends began during Trump years. Why didn’t they note that? That is a little confusing.

Maybe the housing prices will provide clearer insights into why people railed against Biden on the inflation and turned to Trump.

Frankly, I’m stumped.

Anyway, I will be tracking prices and maybe will add housing, to see if prices go down. It will be interesting to see how everything trends. I will be using Power BI to help me visualize the trends and hopefully determine if tariffs or deportations have a salutary or adverse effect on prices.