AIER's Thanksgiving Index Near All-Time High: Costs Rise Again As Inflation Persists

2025-11-25 11:19:00 ET

By Peter C. Earle

The 2025 Thanksgiving season arrives with an unwelcome development: after last year’s brief and much-needed period of easing in several Thanksgiving staples, prices have begun to tick back up. As of September 2025, the AIER Thanksgiving Cost Index stands at 1904.72, less than half of one percent from its all-time high of 1912.30 (2023). Food inflation overall is still cooler than in the early 2020s, but the downward drift seen in 2023–2024 has clearly reversed across most components of the holiday meal. The federal shutdown has complicated matters by halting the release of October CPI data, forcing analysts to rely on September figures and private-sector estimates, yet even the incomplete dataset shows a broad reacceleration. What had looked like the early stages of a sustained normalization now appears to have been only a temporary pause, and the modest but widespread increases recorded this year point to a cost structure that remains stubbornly elevated rather than steadily improving....

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