What each bar means

2019 average

The item's average price across all 12 months of 2019, before the pandemic. Everything else starts from this number.

At +2% a year

The 2019 price grown 2% a year, the Federal Reserve's inflation target. This is the strictest benchmark.

People's Price

The 2019 price grown at the same pace as a typical paycheck.

Average now

The latest average price from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's red when it's above the People's Price and green when it's below.

You paid

The price you entered, if you entered one.

Services

Services like rent, car insurance and doctor visits don't have one national price, so they're shown per $100 spent in 2019. If you spent $100 on a service in 2019, the People's Price is what that same service would cost now if it had risen with paychecks, and "Average now" is what it actually costs, based on the BLS consumer price index for that service. You can scale it to your own bill: if your rent was $1,500 in 2019, multiply each number by 15. Clothing, household goods, tech and medicines are shown the same way, because they cover many products rather than one with a single price.

Where the numbers come from

Prices are Bureau of Labor Statistics average retail prices for urban areas. Pay is the median weekly earnings of full-time workers. If you pick a state, we use prices for its region (Northeast, Midwest, South or West). When BLS hasn't published an item for your region in the last six months, we use national prices and label the item "US data."

Work time is how many minutes someone earning the median wage works to buy the item, then and now, based on a 40-hour week. Items marked * have a shorter 2019 average: coffee covers October to December only, because BLS started its current coffee series in October 2019, and beef stew meat covers 11 months.

Keep in mind

A price above the People's Price isn't proof of overcharging. Some items cost more for real reasons, like the bird flu egg shortage, poor coffee harvests or a smaller cattle herd. The People's Price is a benchmark for affordability, not a judgment on any store.

Coming next: pay growth by state, more precise local prices, and prices shared by shoppers. Sources: BLS Average Price Data and BLS Usual Weekly Earnings.