What Thanksgiving Dinner Cost in the 1970s Compared to Today

Everybody has been feeling the effects of inflation for the last few years, but how does it impact the holiday dinner table? Back in the 1970s, nobody was tallying the national cost of Thanksgiving dinner: the best-known yardstick, the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual survey of a classic feast for 10 people, didn't start until 1986, so the tidy 1970s totals that turn up online are after-the-fact estimates. What the decade did leave behind is a paper trail of actual store prices, collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and reprinted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it says the centerpiece of the meal was a serious expense.The TurkeyNBC/GettyImagesIn November 1975, turkey in retail stores averaged 77.4 cents a pound, according to BLS figures reprinted in the USDA's Poultry and Egg Situation. A 16-pound bird, the size the Farm Bureau uses, came to about $12.38, which, adjusted for inflation with the Consumer Price Index, is roughly $72.58 in November 2025 dollars. Two years earlier, after grocery prices jumped about 21% in a single year, turkey averaged 89.6 cents a pound, which puts a 16-pounder at about $101 today.In the Farm Bureau's 2025 survey, a 16-pound frozen turkey averaged $21.50, or $1.34 a pound. The two figures aren't collected the same way: the Farm Bureau's volunteer shoppers spend the first week of November hunting for the best price they can find without coupons, while the BLS averaged what stores actually charged.Work time tells the same story. In November 1975, production and nonsupervisory workers averaged $4.86 an hour, so that $12.38 turkey cost about two and a half hours of pay. In November 2025, the same workers averaged $31.85 an hour, and the Farm Bureau's $21.50 bird took about 40 minutes.The MilkThe Farm Bureau's menu also calls for a gallon of whole milk, and that was pricier, too. Retail fluid milk averaged 78.5 cents per half-gallon in 1975, according to the USDA's Dairy Situation, or about $1.57 a gallon. In today's dollars, that’s around $9.46, against the $3.73 the Farm Bureau found for a gallon of whole milk in 2025.The Whole BasketH. Armstrong Roberts/GettyImagesGroceries in general got relatively cheaper over those 50 years: between November 1975 and November 2025, the Consumer Price Index for all items rose about 5.9 times, while the index for food eaten at home rose about five times.When the Farm Bureau finally priced the full meal in 1986, it came to $28.74 for 10 people, which works out to about $84 in November 2025 dollars. The 2025 version cost $55.18, or about $5.52 a person, down 5% from 2024 and well below the record $64.05 of 2022. The turkey alone was 39% of that bill, and it was still a better deal than the one your parents got.Read More: