A basic burger ingredient now comes with a side of economic reality: a pound of standard ground beef increasingly costs more than an hour of work at the federal minimum wage. The average price of a pound of lean ground beef has hit $8.34, outpacing the nationwide wage floor of $7.25 that hasn’t moved since 2009, when ground beef was around $2.20 a pound, Money reports. The magazine’s review of seven major grocery chains found prices for 80/20 ground beef ranging from about $6.50 at Trader Joe’s and Aldi to nearly $9 per pound at Publix. Even the cheapest variety of ground beef now costs an average of more than $5.40 a pound, according to federal data released Friday.
Earlier this year, the USDA said the US beef cow herd is at its smallest since 1951 after drought forced producers to reduce numbers by selling cows earlier than planned. “Fewer cattle mean less beef, and when supply tightens while demand holds firm, prices rise,” University of Wisconsin-River Falls agricultural economics professor Brenda Boetel tells the Detroit News. She doesn’t see prices coming down any time soon. “If a producer keeps a heifer today, it can be two to three years before her calf enters the beef supply,” Boetel says. “There’s no way to fix a shortage like this quickly.”
The New World screwworm outbreak, which Democratic lawmakers blame on the Trump administration’s cuts to USDA, is threatening to push prices even higher, Politico reports. Money notes that ground beef overtaking the minimum wage is a “largely symbolic development,” since only a small share of workers actually earn that amount and most states have higher minimum wages, but it underscores how far that pay level stretches in an era when grocery costs are up more than 30% since 2020 and likely to keep rising.
