{"id":90157,"date":"2025-02-08T09:32:02","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T09:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=90157"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:37:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:37:42","slug":"if-inflation-is-easing-why-do-groceries-seem-to-be-getting-more-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2025\/02\/08\/if-inflation-is-easing-why-do-groceries-seem-to-be-getting-more-expensive\/","title":{"rendered":"If inflation is \u2018easing\u2019, why do groceries seem to be getting more expensive?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\ud83d\udcdd Words and charts: Laura Grant<\/a> & Ro Manoim<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Economic indicators are super-useful for the people who understand what they mean, but sadly, most of us don\u2019t. When we see headlines about inflation easing, yet the prices of just about everything continue to increase, it\u2019s hard to understand why we should actually care about an inflation rate that appears to be completely disconnected to our lived reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cost of a basket of food and non-alcoholic beverages is part of what StatsSA uses to calculate inflation. They publish the average prices of the products in that basket monthly in a spreadsheet, so we created a tool<\/a> that takes some of those prices and visualises them, as a kind of reality check. So when you think, wow bananas are getting expensive, you can actually see that they are and you\u2019re not imagining it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re reading this newsletter, chances are you\u2019re not earning the minimum wage. But you can\u2019t avoid the uncomfortable fact that, in South Africa, millions of people are. An earnings report published by StatsSA last year showed that half of the 13-million \u2018employees\u2019 in the country earned R5,417 a month or less (we looked this report in more detail here<\/a>). The data was for 2022, but it\u2019s unlikely there has been a radical change since then. In December 2024, minimum wage was around R4,400 a month (if you worked full-time for 20 days).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A non-profit whose work we love at The Outlier, the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group<\/a> (PMBEJD), have for years been collecting the prices of a basket of 44 goods that are bought by women living in low-income households. The basket includes the foods and the volumes of these foods that women living in a family of seven members (an average low-income household size) say they typically try to buy each month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chart above shows how the cost of this basket of goods has increased between December 2019 and December 2024 and compares it with the national minimum wage. The basket increased in price by R2,183 over five years. The minimum wage increased by about R1,200. In percentage terms, that\u2019s a 38% increase in wage compared with a 68% increase in the cost of the food basket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically, the gap between the minimum wage and cost of this basket widened during Covid and has never really recovered. This obviously puts a huge strain on a family relying on one minimum wage, but even if a household has two minimum wage earners, the budget will be tight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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People on a limited budget have to prioritise what they buy. The PMBEJD collects data on the items that women in low-income households prioritise and buy first in order to ensure their families are fed. We plotted the change in prices of nine of them in the chart above. There are only two vegetables on the priority list, potatoes and onions. These priority foods are filling but often insufficient to meet the nutritional needs of a family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It costs just R2,900 a month to buy those priority food items. Adding veggies, proteins, and nutritional diversity to the plate costs an extra R2,475.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prices of fruits and vegetables also tend to fluctuate seasonally, so can add additional cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Retail check for middle class shoppers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In July 2022, The Outlier started collecting the prices of goods at South Africa\u2019s main retailers, the Checkers, Pick n Pays, Food Lovers Markets, Spars and Woolworths that are key stores in malls around the country. We used to publish a monthly chart of the prices of a food basket and the key takeaway for us was that prices on supermarket shelves tend to fluctuate, a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chart below is a sample of six food products we\u2019ve collected prices for from three national supermarket chains, which illustrates that point. The data doesn\u2019t go back far enough to reflect the Covid pandemic price jump in 2020 that the PMEJD prices do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we have also found is that it has become increasingly difficult to find a shelf price for goods in supermarkets. There are often multiple options with discounts for people with loyalty cards and other discounts if you buy more than one of an item. It can be very annoying if you only want one thing and you don\u2019t have a loyalty card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We haven\u2019t added the names of the supermarkets to the chart, suffice it to say that supermarket X is green, Y is pink and Z is blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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StatsSA\u2019s average food prices<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We compared the prices of six food items collected by PMEJD and one of the supermarkets with the prices in the basket of goods and services that StatsSA uses to calculate inflation. As expected, the StatsSA prices tend to sit in the middle of the prices low-income families pay and those at the supermarket we collected. They are monthly averages, after all. Using the StatsSA prices, bread has increased by 41%, milk by 29%, oil by 62%, peanut butter by 54% and sugar by 56% between December 2019 and December 2024. Maize meal has increased by 35% since October 2022, which is when the StatsSA data starts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about coffee and chocolate and some those other grocery items that make it into our shopping trolleys even though they aren\u2019t always necessities? Chocolate\u2019s definitely getting more expensive and so is coffee. We\u2019ve selected a few products below to see how their average prices have increased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What can we take away from this deep-dive into food prices? Prices are still high. Inflation measure the change in the cost of goods, not the actual cost, so if inflation slows down, prices still increase, but not as fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1387],"tags":[],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-90157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-the-outlier"],"acf":{"post_style":"bc","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":{"ID":90158,"id":90158,"title":"food basket and minimum wage","filename":"food-basket-and-minimum-wage.png","filesize":75854,"url":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/food-basket-and-minimum-wage.png","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2025\/02\/08\/if-inflation-is-easing-why-do-groceries-seem-to-be-getting-more-expensive\/food-basket-and-minimum-wage\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"The gap between what minimum wage workers earn in South Africa and the cost of a basic food basket is widening.\nThe\u00a0Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group<\/a> (PMBEJD) collect the prices of 44 goods that women living in low-income households say they buy every month. The volumes are for seven people, the average size of low-income households.\nThe cost of this basket shot up during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 \u2013 and has never really recovered. Over the past five years, the cost of the same basket has increased by R2,183.\nOver the same period, the minimum wage has risen by roughly R1,200 \u2013 a 38% increase compared with the 68% increase in the price of the food basket.\nIn December 2024, minimum wage was around R4,400 a month for full-time work (20 days a month). According to Statistics SA, half of the country\u2019s 13-million \u2018employees\u2019 earned R5,414 or less a month in 2022.\n