Are prices lower in stores compared to a year ago?

Are prices lower than a year ago? I'll pull the latest inflation data to check.

No - store prices overall are not lower than a year ago, they are higher.

•Overall consumer prices: The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose 0.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.7 percent over the year . U.S. consumer prices rose 0.6% in September 2026, bringing annual inflation to 3.7%

•BLS data does not show broad consumer-price deflation:

> Grocery prices are higher than a year ago. Overall prices are higher than a year ago

Lower inflation does not mean lower prices - it means prices are increasing more slowly.

For grocery / "food at home" (store) prices specifically:

•Grocery prices dropped 0.1% on a seasonally adjusted basis last month, leaving them 1.8% higher than a year earlier

•Specifically: Food unchanged/+2.5%; food at home −0.1% / +1.8% y/y

•The 12-month percentage change table shows Food | 2.5% | Food at home | 1.8%

•FMI statement on September 2026 CPI: decrease of 0.1% for food-at-home inflation in September and a 1.8% increase over the last 12 months

•In August, food-at-home prices were 2.2 percent higher in August than they had been 12 months earlier

There was a small month-over-month decline in September for food at home (−0.1%), but year-over-year store prices are still up about 1.8% nationally.

Some individual categories within the store were cheaper year-over-year and helped offset increases elsewhere - for example milk prices fell 2.0%, while the wider dairy category was 0.7% cheaper than a year earlier, and prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs fell 0.5% in September - but the overall grocery basket is not lower than a year ago.

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Backs: “BLS data does not show broad consumer-price deflation: Grocery prices are higher than a year ago.”