The Oyster Stuffing Index

Monday, November 25, 2024

 

Americans look forward to many Thanksgiving traditions. There’s almost always a turkey, although there may be debate about roasting versus frying, and maybe brining. There’s football, perhaps in the back yard before dinner, and certainly while comatose on the sofa after dinner. And there are plans for holiday shopping, either via the phone or standing in pre-dawn lines for early Friday morning deals. Such is Thanksgiving from coast to coast.

Other traditions vary across the country, regional variations often passed down through the generations. BLS looked at some of the Thanksgiving culinary traditions around the country (with the help of a few internet searches). In New England, the birthplace of Thanksgiving, your turkey dinner is not complete without oyster stuffing and cranberry relish. No Thanksgiving table in the South will be complete without macaroni and cheese and sweet potato pie. And there might be a turkey being deep fried. Home of the hot dish, “Midwest nice” often means sharing a casserole with your neighbors. So, we find green bean and corn casseroles on the Thanksgiving table across the Midwest. And our neighbors out West have a variety of traditions, from sourdough stuffing to mushroom gravy to Frog Eye Salad (look it up).

It's not unusual around this time of year to see data from the BLS Consumer Price Index (CPI) cited to identify the change in the price of a Thanksgiving dinner, or specific items like turkey. This year the innovative CPI staff took a different approach, highlighting our northeast neighbors by developing an Oyster Stuffing Index. By culling through CPI microdata and using recipe quantities as weights, we provide a fresh look at how the CPI can be used to track Thanksgiving prices.

It starts with the recipe for oyster stuffing, with apologies if this isn’t exactly how your grandmother made it: 

• 8 cups dry breadcrumbs

• 3 cups oysters, liquid reserved

• 3 large eggs, beaten

• 1 cup chopped celery

• 1 cup chopped onion

• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

• 1 ½ teaspoons salt

• 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

• ½ teaspoon dried thyme

• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Next comes the conversion. We need to identify the correct CPI category for each ingredient and convert the measurements to a common base to be used as weights.

Ingredient	CPI category	Tablespoons
8 cups dry breadcrumbs	Other bakery products	128
3 cups oysters, liquid reserved	Fresh fish and seafood	48
3 large eggs, beaten	Eggs	10.5
1 cup chopped celery	Other fresh vegetables, herbs	16
1 cup chopped onion	Other fresh vegetables, herbs	16
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley	Other fresh vegetables, herbs	2
1 tablespoon vegetable oil	Peanut butter, fats, and oils	1
1 ½ teaspoons salt	Spices, seasonings, condiments, sauces	0.5
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning	Spices, seasonings, condiments, sauces	0.33
½ teaspoon dried thyme	Spices, seasonings, condiments, sauces	0.33
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper	Spices, seasonings, condiments, sauces	0.33

Summing the tablespoons we get the weights for our Oyster Stuffing Index:

• Other bakery products – 57.4 percent

• Fresh fish and seafood – 21.5 percent

• Other fresh vegetables, herbs – 15.2 percent

• Eggs – 4.7 percent

• Spices, seasonings, condiments, sauces – 0.7 percent

• Peanut butter, fats, oils – 0.4 percent

Finally, we apply these weights to the CPI data. And since we are highlighting a regional dish, let’s take the opportunity to look at regional data from the Consumer Price Index (CPI). While the monthly release of the national CPI gets all the attention, data are also available for geographic regions and selected metropolitan areas, although at higher levels of item aggregation. For this exercise, we used unpublished item-region indexes to calculate the four regional oyster stuffing indexes, for your one-time enjoyment. Perhaps this year the whole country will enjoy oyster stuffing. Here’s a look at the oyster stuffing index over the past 10 years. Because we only have 10 months of data for 2024, we used the first 10 months of each year.

Editor's note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

What do the data reveal?

• The 5-year period between 2014 and 2019 had less overall inflation than the 5-year period 2019 to 2024.

• There is some regional variation from 2014 to 2019: prices in the Midwest declined while prices in the West increased the most.

• In contrast, the 2019–2024 increase in the West was the smallest of the regions.

• There is not a lot of regional variation in total over the past 10 years, with each region experiencing close to a 30-percent increase over the 10-year period—with the Midwest being slightly less.

• Vegetable oil was the ingredient with the largest 10-year increase in all regions except the West, where eggs had the largest increase.

Maybe oyster stuffing isn’t your Thanksgiving tradition, but you can be sure the ingredients in your specialty fall into one of the CPI food categories. If you are taking a break from baking that pumpkin pie or mashing those turnips this Thanksgiving, look at the available data on consumer prices. In addition, BLS produces monthly news releases highlighting regional CPIs. 

 

Percent change in oyster stuffing index, 2014–2019 and 2019–2024

Region	2014–2019	2019–2024
Northeast	4.0	25.9
Midwest	-0.6	27.6
South	2.0	27.8
West	6.6	23.0
Note: Data are for the first 10 months of the year.