How to read the USDA egg market report

The USDA egg market report is not one report, it is a family of them, published by the Agricultural Marketing Service under a service called Egg Market News. Together they price the wholesale shell egg market from several angles: a daily national benchmark, weekly regional prices, weekly inventory, a monthly cage-free read and a weekly look at what grocery stores are advertising. This site is built on those reports, so this guide doubles as its methodology page.

The reports, and what each one does

The daily flagship is the National Shell Egg Index, a five-day rolling weighted average of the price of graded loose shell eggs, quoted in cents per dozen by size. The Combined Regional report lines the producing regions up against each other every week. The National Weekly Shell Egg Inventory report counts how many eggs are sitting in coolers, in thousands of 30-dozen cases. A monthly report tracks the cage-free segment on its own. A weekly grocery report shows how hard stores are promoting eggs. The weekly Egg Markets Overview ties the threads into one summary.

A free public price, from confirmed sales

For years the wholesale egg quote everyone watched was a private one, from Urner Barry. USDA's Egg Market News gives a free, public alternative, and it is not scraped or modeled. Market reporters collect prices by confirming what real lots actually traded for with the buyers and sellers who moved them, then publish the negotiated result. A hoped-for asking price never reaches the report unless eggs changed hands at it, which is what makes a USDA egg price a market fact rather than an offer.

Loose versus cartoned

The benchmark is a loose price, not a carton price. Loose means the eggs are sold in bulk, on flats and in cases, before they are graded into consumer cartons and labeled. Cartoned eggs carry the added cost of the packaging, the grading and the retailer's handling, so they trade higher. The public USDA benchmark, and the number this site leads with, is the loose one, because it is the cleanest read on what an egg is worth before the store touches it.

Large white is the benchmark

Of all the sizes and shell colors USDA prices, large white is the reference. Large is the size most households buy and most recipes assume, white shells dominate conventional US production, and the large white loose spec is the one the whole market talks in. The institutional trade prices most of its contracts off the private Expana (Urner Barry) assessments, and USDA's large white number is the free public benchmark on the same spec. USDA prints extra large, medium and small, and brown eggs, right alongside it. But when someone says the egg market did something this week, they almost always mean large white.

Worked example: reading the benchmark

The chart above is the live large white benchmark. Read the latest point as the national loose price in cents per dozen, then read it two ways: against last week for the short move, and against the same week a year ago for the bigger picture. A single day's print can jump on thin trading, which is exactly why USDA smooths the index over five days. The line, not the last dot, is the market.

The Scramble reports these USDA prices as they are published, in cents per dozen and as ranges where USDA gives a range. We do not forecast where the number goes next.