Archive for month: November, 2025

With the current government shutdown, the high cost of living is a “top of mind” issue for all Americans. Our pets have become valued members of our families, so 1 question that often comes up is, “How does Petflation compare to Human Inflation?” In this report we will attempt to answer that question. For all Pet Segments but Supplies, there is a closely matching Human spending category, so the matchup is relatively easy. Let’s get started. We will begin with the most asked question, “How does Pet Food inflation compare to Grocery inflation?”

This chart and all but one in the report show annual cumulative inflation from 1997 to September 2025. 1997 was chosen as the base because that was the 1st year that the CPI was reported by Pet Industry Segment.

You can see that cumulative inflation is a pretty close match for Pet Food & Groceries.

• Grocery prices have doubled since 1997 and Pet Food is close, +91.5%
• Grocery inflation has been above Pet Food except for 2009>2014 and 2019.
• The Melamine recall in 2007 and the switch to Made in the USA caused a spike in Pet Food prices in 2008/2009.
• Inflation slowed and was similar for both from 2015 to 2019
• The 2020 Pandemic had an earlier and slightly greater impact on Grocery prices than on Pet Food.

Now, let’s compare the cumulative inflation of Medical Services to Veterinary Services.

• Human Medical Services prices are 2 2/3 times higher now than in 1997 so you see why people are concerned.
• Veterinary prices have quadrupled since 1997, 79% more than Human Medical.
• Veterinary inflation has been above Human Medical since 1999 and the gap has widened since 2022.

Now, we’ll compare Pet Services inflation to Haircuts & Other Personal Services.

• They have very similar patterns, but Pet Services inflation has cumulatively been ahead of Human Haircuts/Personal Services every year since 1997.
• The price gap began to widen in 2005 and Pet Services inflation is now 39% ahead of Haircuts.
• Prices doubled since 1997 for Pet Services in 2020 and in 2023 for Haircuts.

Under normal circumstances, we would turn our attention to Pet Supplies. Unfortunately, there is no clearly matching Human Category for Pet Supplies. We did figure out a bit of a “work around”. The US BLS began reporting the CPIs for individual Pet Industry Segments in 1997. From 1977 to 1997 they only reported the combined CPI for Pet Products (Food, Pets & Supplies). A reasonable Human match for this group is the CPI for All Commodities.

Here is a chart comparing the inflation of Pet Products to All Commodities.

• The 2 patterns are almost identical and the final numbers since 1977 are within 0.3%.
• All Commodities had a slight lead in Inflation from 1977 through 2008.
• Except for 2014 & 2021/2022, Pet Products took a slight lead in inflation from 2009>2025
• Prices doubled for Commodities from 1977 in 1992 and for Pet Products in 1996.
• Prices tripled from 1977 for both in 2021.

Finally, we will compare Total Petflation to the National CPI

• Except for the Big Pet price lift in 2008/2009, the patterns are almost identical.
• Pet took the lead in cumulative inflation in 2002 and have maintained it ever since.
• The gap widened in 2008/2009 largely due to the switch to Made in the USA Pet Food.
• Total Pet doubled 1997 prices in 2022. The National CPI did it in 2025.
• Since 1997, Petflation is 27.7% more than the National CPI Rate.

In the charts, you saw Petflation patterns that were very similar to Human categories. However, Petflation “won” in all comparisons but Pet Food vs Groceries. The most impactful and concerning chart to me was Veterinary Services vs Human Medical Services. We hear a lot from a wide variety of sources about the high cost of Medical care. It’s amazing that the Veterinary price increase is 79% more. Veterinary prices have quadrupled since 1997.

The charts give a great historical overview but what will happen next? There are outside events that can directly affect prices. 2 examples are the 2007 Melamine recall in Pet Food as Pet Parents switched to “made in the USA, with all USA ingredients”. This caused prices to increase. The second event was the 2020 COVID pandemic. People changed spending patterns and there were serious supply chain disruptions which drove prices up. What is next? Another pandemic is likely but who knows what is next. We live in a very imperfect world so something will happen, sometime.

There is another important number that wasn’t included in the charts – the average annual YOY price change. Below are the annual average price changes for the Pet and Human Categories in the charts. All categories, including Pet Products and All Commodities, show the 1997>2024 average. This allows valid comparisons.

You see that except for Pet Food, the annual Petflation rate is 18>57% higher than the Human rate. It comes as no surprise that Veterinary and Medical Services have the highest rates for both Pets and People. Medical Services (+3.5%) is 40% above the National CPI but Veterinary leads the pack. Their average inflation rate is +5.0%, which is 67% above the Total Petflation rate.

I added a category to this list that is not in the charts – All Services. This was added to illustrate that Services is the driver in both overall Inflation and Petflation. There are only 2 major categories in spending. An expenditure is either for a Commodity (Product) or a Service. In overall spending, Services Inflation is 76.5% more than Commodities inflation and about 64% of all spending is on Services. The disparity is even worse in the Pet Industry. The Petflation rate for All Pet Services (Vet & Pet) is 2.35 times higher than the rate for Pet Products (Food, Pets & Supplies). Thankfully, Pet Services are less than half of Total Pet spending.

I hope that this report gave you a better understanding of Petflation in comparison to Overall Inflation. You can clearly see the similarities and differences.