Preparing a Thanksgiving dinner this year will cost less than it did last year, but is still significantly more than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, new research has shown.
The average cost of a meal for 10 people this year has gone down to $58.08 which works at at around $5.80 per person. This marks a five percent drop from the figure reported in 2023, which was 4.5 percent lower than in 2022—the year that saw a record high cost of around $65.05, according to the latest survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).
The drop in prices “does not mean a return to pre-inflation prices,” Betty Resnick, an economist at the AFBF, told Newsweek, with the cost of a Thanksgiving meal in 2024 still 19 percent higher than it was in 2019, the year before the onset of the pandemic, the survey found.
Resnick warned: “While we have seen our Thanksgiving survey prices decline slightly the last two years, it’s important to keep in mind that prices are still nearly 20 percent higher than they were before the pandemic. A reduction in inflation does not mean a return to pre-inflation prices.”
The annual Farm Bureau survey, which looked at prices from November 1 to 7, comes off the back of the recent U.S. presidential election, for which inflation was a key concern among voters.
The top-ranking issue in every survey conducted exclusively by Redfield & Wilton Strategies on behalf of Newsweek, for a 16-month period in the lead up to the election, was the economy.
