We've been tracking prices across 15 categories since 2019 — groceries, housing, energy, streaming, insurance, wages, and more. Each has its own tracker page with detailed data and analysis. But sometimes you want the big picture: how does everything compare on a single chart?

Inspired by Mark J. Perry's iconic "Price Changes" chart, we built our own version using the indexes we track. The chart starts in January 2019 and uses each category's latest available 2026 value. Source months vary and are labeled on the individual trackers.

The Chart

View the full interactive chart →

The thick dashed black line is overall inflation (CPI-U), up about 31% from January 2019 through June 2026. Everything above that line has outpaced inflation. Everything below has risen more slowly — or actually gotten cheaper.

What Stands Out

The worst offenders

Eggs (+57%) remain the most volatile item we track. They spiked to more than 300% of the 2019 annual average during the avian-flu crisis, then fell to $2.19 by May 2026.

Ground beef (+79% from 2019) tells a quieter but more relentless story — a sustained climb tied to the cattle cycle and a historically small U.S. herd.

Home values (+54%) surged during the pandemic and remained elevated through the June 2026 Zillow release. The lock-in effect has kept resale inventory constrained in many markets.

The sticky middle

Netflix (+54%), electricity (+52%), rent (+44%), and restaurants (+40%) all outpaced the roughly 31% rise in overall CPI. The insurance series is annual through 2025 and sits near +32%.

Keeping pace

Average hourly earnings (+34%) narrowly outpaced the tracker's roughly 31% CPI comparison through June 2026. That is an average across jobs and workers; individual pay histories can differ substantially.

What's actually cheaper

Chicken wings (-28%) were cheaper in the 2025 annual wholesale series than in 2019. Apple Music (+20%) and the used-car CPI-derived proxy (+25%) also rose less than overall inflation. Gas is different: the annual history ends in 2025, while the July 19, 2026 snapshot was about 54% above the 2019 annual baseline.

The takeaway

Overall inflation is up about 31% from January 2019 through June 2026. But that single number hides enormous variation. Your personal inflation rate depends heavily on what you spend money on. If you rent, eat beef, and drive, your cost of living may have risen far more than the headline CPI. If you are a homeowner with a fixed mortgage and spend more heavily in slower-rising categories, you may have done better than the average.

Explore the full interactive chart → Click any category in the legend to show or hide it, and hover for exact values.

Related data