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The price of Halloween candy is (frightfully) high this year. Rising 71 percent from 2021, a $9.91 100-piece bag of candy is now $16.96.
You can see the climb:
The culprits are cocoa beans, sugar, and corn sweeteners.
Halloween Candy Inflation
Sometimes two graphs are all we need to see.
Cocoa
Sugar
The reasons the cocoa and sugar graphs spiked skyward include extreme weather conditions and tariffs. Then, though, looking at each commodity, it becomes much more complicated. With causes ranging from import restrictions, price supports, and planning for the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), to inventories, hedge fund speculation, and financial regulation, many of the causes are country- or region-specific. However, all converged on the supply side to elevate prices for sugar, cocoa, and corn sweeteners between December 2019 and November 2024:
- Sugar manufacturing: up 43.8 percent
- Cocoa products: up 143.9 percent
- Corn sweeteners: up 26.2 percent.
As for demand, even with higher prices, demand remained strong for sugar and other sweets. However, we did start buying less chocolate.
Our Bottom Line: Inflation
We’ve noted that the price of a 100-piece bag of candy rose close to 71 percent between 2021 and 2026. At the same time, overall inflation averaged 22 percent.
Economists have said that inflation can have three causes:
- It can be cost push, where pricier land, labor, and/or capital nudge the cost of production upward.
- Also, though, we can have demand side inflation when there are too many dollars chasing too few goods and services.
- Then, a third possibility is the impact of an extreme price hike for a single crucial input. Our example could be oil–and the current crisis at Hormuz.
Also, we should note that monetarists instead say that inflation depends on the money supply.
Below, with the price increase for Halloween candy exceeding the inflation rate, we could say that sugar and chocolate created its cost push:
My sources and more: Fortuitously, the BLS recently focused on Halloween candy inflation. Then, this NY Times article was the ideal complement. And still searching, we found more data at Finance Buzz.
Please note that our last graph was drawn by ChatGPT.
