The PNC Christmas Price index reports the cost to purchase the
gifts included in the classic holiday song “The 12 Days of Christmas”.
PNC tells us it has “ . . . calculated the 2019 price
tag for The PNC Christmas Price Index at $38,993.59, a negligible $67.56 or
0.2% more than last year's cost, but less than the government's Consumer Price
Index, which increased 1.8% through October in year-over-year measurement
before seasonal adjustment.”
The major differences in the included items are –
* a 20% drop in the cost of turtle doves, “the first drop in
price since 2004”.
* a 10% increase in the price of 5 gold rings. “After falling in 2018 due to less demand
and fluctuations in gold prices, Gold Rings rebounded” in 2019.
* a 7.7% jump in laying geese “largely due to an increase of
interest in backyard farming”.
* a 4.5% drop in the cost of one partridge in a pear tree,
resulting from a $10.00 drop in the price of the tree.
Once again, the labor unions for musicians, dancing ladies and
leaping lords proves to be better than the milking maid union. The
milkers were paid the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for 2017 through
2019. After the individual partridge, costing
$20.18, the $58.00 price tag for 8 milking maids was the lowest on the
list. Leaping lords got $1,000 each,
slightly more than dancing ladies. The
musicians got a small .8% raise for 2019.
The chief economist of a bank in Philadelphia, which eventually
became part of PNC, began estimating the cost of the 12 Christmas gifts in 1984
as a holiday client letter. This year’s price is about 95% higher
than the first index from 34 years ago.
For those who prefer the convenience of online shopping the
Index also calculates the cost of the gifts purchased on the
internet. As online costs are higher due to travel and shipping, the
total cost is $42,258.91, $3,265.32 more than “in store” purchases.
The actual true cost of every gift in the song (with each
previous day’s purchases repeated over the 12 days) is $170,298.03 in store and
$194,502.72 online.
There appears to be some discrepancies in the 2018 numbers
reported in this year’s press release and table from PNC and the numbers from
the 2018 chart that I had reported in last year’s post. PNC tells us the 2018 prices were “adjusted
to better reflect open market pricing”.
Click here for the press release that includes the full chart.
TTFN
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