Grocery Prices
Meat & Poultry prices
U.S. city average · May 2026
Meat & Poultry price snapshot
The meat & poultry group covers bacon, chicken breast, chicken, ground beef, ham and pork chops — 6 staples Basket Report prices each month at the U.S. city average from Bureau of Labor Statistics data. In May 2026 they ran from chicken at $2.04 per pound up to ground beef at $6.75 per pound, with 4 costing more than a month earlier and 2 costing less.
The biggest monthly increase came from pork chops, up 6.7%. Going the other way, ground beef fell 2.2%. Over the past year ground beef stands out, up 12.8% from twelve months ago.
These are unadjusted BLS shelf averages — never estimates — and each one feeds the fixed-weight Grocery Basket Price Index. Bacon carries the longest record, charted monthly back to January 1980; open any row for its history, or check the latest meat & poultry move on the Receipt.
| Item | Unit | Price | MoM | YoY | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bacon, sliced | pound | $6.71 | ▼ 1.7% | ▼ 3.9% | |
| Chicken breast, boneless | pound | $4.17 | ▲ 0.1% | ▼ 1.1% | |
| Chicken, fresh, whole | pound | $2.04 | ▲ 0.5% | ▼ 1.2% | |
| Ground beef, 100% beef | pound | $6.75 | ▼ 2.2% | ▲ 12.8% | |
| Ham, boneless, excluding canned | pound | $5.46 | ▲ 1.0% | ▲ 0.1% | |
| Pork chops, center cut, bone-in | pound | $4.91 | ▲ 6.7% | ▲ 8.9% |
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI Average Price Data, series listed on each item page. Retrieved May 2026 via the BLS Public Data API. Download the full directory as CSV or JSON. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.