The 2024 Christmas Price Index reflects wage growth and rising service prices

December 4 – (StatePoint) Holiday gift-giving begins on Christmas Day with the traditional gift of a partridge in a pear tree. True Love will pay the bill by the first day of January.

For each holiday season, the PNC Holiday Price Index lists the price of giving away all items in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” This year, that value is $49,263.47, an increase of 5.4% from 2023.

PNC’s Holiday Price Index mimics the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index, which measures the average change in prices consumers pay for goods and services over time. The PNC index is significantly higher in 2024 than the BLS CPI, which rose 2.4% year-over-year, reflecting wage growth in the service industry as a key driver of overall higher prices.

“Believe it or not, we are still seeing cause and effect of the pandemic-inflation hangover, even nearly five years later,” said Amanda Agati, chief investment officer of PNC’s Asset Management Group. “Given years of strong price increases, we would think that inflation has nowhere to go, but we are wrong.”

Services instead of goods

The service-oriented economy is represented by the final four gifts in the index – the Ladies Dancing, Lords-a-Leaping, Pipers Piping and Drummers Drumming. Prices are traditionally based on the cost of employing various artists and musicians. The Ten Lords A Leaping is the most expensive gift in the index for the third year in a row at $14,539.20. Overall, gifts in the service sector rose by 7.9% in 2024.

This rise in service sector prices reflects a long-term shift away from manufacturing concentration in the U.S. economy since the PNC Index was introduced in 1984. At that time, goods accounted for 70% of the consumer price index; today this figure is only 35%.

Many of the gifts in the goods index remained unchanged in price in 2024 – the turtle doves, calling birds, gold rings and swans all remained unchanged, although still expensive year-on-year. An exception was French chickens and geese, with the latter representing one of the most volatile gifts in this year’s index, with growth of more than 15%.

Housing construction is still high

The most volatile gift in the 2024 index is the first one – the partridge in the pear tree – whose price rose by 17.1%. The least volatile gift, the Eight-Maids-a-Milking, has remained unchanged since 2009.

The Christmas Price Index also calculates the “true cost of Christmas,” which is the cost of purchasing all the gifts as repeated in the verses of the song. These costs increased 3.6% to $209,272 in 2024, exceeding the $200,000 threshold for the second consecutive year.

If you prefer to shop online, you’ll pay almost $5,000 more for the convenience and, of course, the packaging and shipping required for bird gifts. PNC’s Online Holiday Price Index costs increased 3.9% in 2024 to a total of $54,073.69. Most gifts saw an increase in internet shopping, but if you’re looking for bargain buys based on last year’s budget, prices for the Calling Birds, Gold Rings and Swans online remained unchanged in 2024.

For more information about the Index, custom gifts and the 41-year tradition, visit pnc.com.

“Buying the same gifts year after year may seem boring,” says Agati, “but keeping an eye on changes in your spending will help you be more brilliant with your money, and that, in my opinion, is the goal of the Christmas Price Index.”

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