Food prices have become less burdensome for U.S. consumers in recent months as lower inflation and rising wages have combined to boost people’s purchasing power at the grocery store, the Biden administration asserted last week.

It now takes about 3.6 hours for typical non-managerial workers to earn enough money to buy the groceries they need for a week — about the same amount of time as in 2019, the White House Council of Economic Advisers wrote in a Thursday blog post. That figure is down from close to 3.8 hours in early 2023 and more than four hours in 2015, the agency said.

While food costs are generally higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic set off a wave of ferocious inflation, it takes “slightly less work” for people to purchase a bag of groceries now than it did a year ago because wages have moved ahead faster than grocery prices, according to the Council of Economic Advisers. 

Meanwhile, 27% of the average shopper’s grocery basket costs less now than it did a year ago and is in line with the average during the period since 2000, the agency said, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than three-quarters of the typical basket has seen less inflation in 2024 than last year, the agency added.

The White House’s assertion that grocery prices are becoming easier for shoppers to manage in the wake of galloping inflation, which peaked at an annual clip of more than 13% in mid-2022, follows election-year efforts by the executive branch to bring supermarket costs down for shoppers. 

President Joe Biden — who has been facing criticism over grocery inflation as he seeks re-election — earlier this year pinned blame for higher prices on retailers, arguing that grocers have profited by keeping prices up even as their own costs have fallen.

On Thursday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers identified Aldi, Amazon, Target, Walgreens and Walmart as retailers that have recently lowered prices, adding that those cuts may not have appeared in government statistics yet. The agency said, however, that grocers have maintained higher margins than other types of retailers as the shocks brought on by the pandemic have faded and called on the grocery industry to bring prices down further.

“As President Biden repeatedly says, families are still struggling with high prices, which is why we continue to push for lower costs in all the components of family budgets, including housing, health care, child care, and getting rid of junk fees,” the Council of Economic Advisers wrote in its blog post. “Of course, grocery prices are high on that list and it is therefore good to see relief coming in that important space.”