^{Wealth & Poverty Review} Time Pricing the 4th of July Cookout

Every year, the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates the cost of a traditional Independence Day cookout. The basket includes summer cookout staples such as cheeseburgers, chicken breasts, pork chops, potato chips, pork and beans, fresh strawberries, homemade potato salad ingredients, fresh-squeezed lemonade ingredients, chocolate chip cookies and ice cream.

Since 2016, the dollar cost of this basket has risen 30.3 percent, from $56.67 to $73.82. At first glance, that suggests celebrating the Fourth of July has become significantly more expensive.

But money prices tell only half of the story. The real question is not how many dollars the meal costs, but how much time people must work to earn those dollars. Since 2016, blue-collar worker hourly earnings increased 50.4 percent, from $21.48 to $32.31 per hour.

Because wages rose faster than prices, the time price of the cookout actually fell 13.4 percent—from 2.64 hours of work in 2016 to just 2.28 hours today, a savings of 21 minutes.

Another way to measure progress is to ask: How much more does the same hour of work buy? We call this the abundance multiplier. Compared to 2016, the same amount of work today buys 15.5 percent more.

America added 22 million people between 2016 and today, a population increase of 6.8 percent. Yet abundance didn’t merely keep pace with population—it grew 2.28 times faster. Every 1 percent increase in people produced a 2.28 percent increase in cookout abundance. That’s the signature of superabundance: on average every additional person contributes more than they consume. Even though there are 22 million more of us, we’ll actually spend 7.5 percent less time as a country working to pay for our celebration compared to 2016.

Americans may spend more dollars, but they spend less of their lives earning this year’s Independence Day feast.

We note that government money printing during COVID did cause a spike, but we’ve recovered to our decreasing time price and greater abundance trend.

This year did see a slight reversal. Compared with the record-low time price in 2025, food prices increased 4.1 percent while blue-collar hourly earnings rose 3.5 percent. As a result, the time price of the cookout edged up by just 0.5 percent—less than one minute of additional work. Even after that small increase, the Independence Day cookout remains substantially more affordable in time than it was a decade ago.