Here’s a snapshot of what grocery prices looked like 50 years ago today, December 1, 1970, from that day’s issue of the Pittsburgh Press. This store had just started a practice that is quite common today, namely, posting the unit price of items, rather than having to do the math in the store.
Flour was $1.77 for a 25 pound bag with coupon, or $2.18 without the coupon. Many canned goods, such as beets, green beans, kidney beans, and store brand soup, were 8 for a dollar. Margarine was 5 pounds for a dollar, and 3 pounds of peanut butter was 99 cents.
Saltines were 4 boxes for a dollar, a tuna was three cans for a dollar. Ground beef was 59 cents a pound, and bacon was either 59 cents or 79 cents a pound, depending on brand. You could also get one pound of bacon in a can for only 79 cents. One pound loaves of bread were a quarter.
In the produce aisle, bananas were 8 cents a pound, carrots were a dime a pound, and grapes were 29 cents per pound. A ten pound bag of potatoes would set you back 89 cents. Cans of store brand pop were a dime.
The federal minimum wage was $1.65 at the time, as opposed to the current $7.25 per hour, about 4 times higher. Postage had just gone up to 8 cents, compared to 55 cents today, almost 7 times higher. So depending on how you account for inflation, you would need to multiply these prices by a similar number. A pound of hamburger cost 59 cents. If you use the cost of postage to track inflation, that works out to about $4 a pound. Fifty years ago, you had to work just over 3 minutes at the minimum wage to buy an 8 cent banana. Today, that same amount of work would earn you 40 cents.
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