United States

The egg supply shock in the United States arrived a year earlier than is widely remembered. In January 2025 alone, highly pathogenic avian influenza wiped out roughly nineteen million laying hens — about eight percent of the national flock in a single month — and retail prices reached all-time records. The shortage was severe enough that the United States, normally an exporter, turned to imports from Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, Türkiye and South Korea to keep supermarket shelves stocked.

Conditions in 2026 have reversed. Flocks have been rebuilt, prices are down more than forty percent from a year earlier, and the USDA expects the 2026 average to come in far below that of 2025. Producers now express concern about oversupply. The swing from record scarcity to surplus within eighteen months illustrates how quickly the egg cycle turns once replacement pullets mature.

The risk has not disappeared: the H5N1 virus continues to circulate among wild birds, and each migration season brings renewed uncertainty for the industry. The U.S. figure on this page reflects prices observed daily at Kroger, one of the country's largest grocers, converted from a conventional dozen to a 10-egg basis. The federal minimum wage used in the purchasing-power widget ($7.25) is a statutory floor; most states set theirs higher.

Our daily tracking at Kroger began in mid-June 2026, and the listed price has been comparatively stable. The monthly median was about $5.39 per 10 eggs in June and July 2026, edged up to around $5.44 in August, and eased to about $5.25 in September and $5.30 in October, within a daily range of roughly $5.23 to $5.55. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' national average price for Grade A large eggs, converted to a 10-egg basis, sits at a very different level: about $1.83 in May 2026, $1.78 in June, and $1.89 in August and September. The two figures measure different things — BLS averages a standard dozen across stores nationwide each month, while the Kroger figure is one retailer's listed price for a particular carton, which may differ in format or production system — so the gap reflects what is being measured, not overpricing.

A further structural factor is the shift to cage-free production. A growing number of states, led by California under its Proposition 12, require that eggs sold within their borders come from cage-free hens, and many large retailers and food companies have made similar sourcing pledges. As of 2026, cage-free hens are thought to account for well over a third of the national laying flock, up from a small minority a decade earlier. Cage-free housing generally costs more to build and run, and because the rules differ from state to state, the same carton can carry noticeably different prices depending on where it is sold.