How much have prices risen since covid-19?
Short answer: In September 2026 prices in Sweden were on average 26.6 percent higher than in 2019. What cost 100 kronor then costs 126.60 now. Inflation peaked at 12.3 percent in December 2022 and is now down to 1.2 percent, but prices do not go back just because the rate of increase falls. Of 200 groups of goods and services, 32 were at their highest level ever in September 2026. Real wages in 2025 were still lower than in 2019.
More on everyday costs: The electricity price shows electricity by price area and for households, Electric cars the pump price with and without tax, Who owns the homes how rents are set, Farmers' conditions what the farmer gets for food compared with the shop price.
This much more expensive has everything become since 2019.
Consumer price index per month, rebased so that the 2019 average is 100. CPI is the official measure of how prices of household consumption change. CPIF is the same index with mortgage rates held fixed, the measure the Riksbank targets.
In the first year of the pandemic prices barely moved. From autumn 2021 they rose quickly: energy first, then food and finally almost everything. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, electricity, gas, fuel and grain shot up. The rate of increase peaked in December 2022.
CPI rose more than CPIF in 2023 because the Riksbank raised its policy rate to bring inflation down, and mortgage interest is included in CPI. When rates were cut from 2024 it went the other way. Over the whole period they end up close to each other.
Falling inflation means prices rise more slowly, not that they fall. The level from 2022 and 2023 remains, and each year's new increase is added on top.
What 100 kronor from 2019 costs today.
Drag the slider to see the price tag month by month. Each row is one of the thirteen CPI expenditure divisions: what cost 100 kronor there on average in 2019, at the selected month's prices.
The spread is wide. Housing, which includes electricity, rents and mortgage rates, has risen the most. Clothing, furniture and electronics have risen less, and mobile phones and computers are cheaper than in 2019 for the same performance. Statistics Sweden accounts for a new phone being better than the old one, so an equally expensive phone with more memory counts as a price cut in the index.
Pick a good or service.
The finest level of CPI at Statistics Sweden, about 200 groups under the international COICOP 2018 classification, rebased to 2019 = 100. The names are Statistics Sweden's.
The prices that never came down.
Each dot is a CPI group that rose at least 10 percent from 2019 to its peak. Along the bottom: how much it rose to the peak. Upwards: how much of that increase has disappeared since. Zero means the price is still at its peak, 100 that it is back at the 2019 level. Orange dots are at most 2 percent below their peak.
At the peak now: increase since 2019, percent
Gave back the most: share of the increase that has reversed, percent
Most prices do not come down. That is normal: wages, rents and other costs that rose during the inflation years remain, and with inflation around two percent a price that stands still is a cut in real terms. What has come down is mainly goods that follow a world market, such as vegetables, fruit, oil and electricity, and goods where technology gets cheaper.
At the peak are mostly services and fees: water and sewage, rents, insurance and household services, where wages and municipal costs make up most of the price. So a price that has not fallen does not in itself show that someone is charging too much. It shows that the cost behind it has not fallen, or that something else is holding it up. Which one it is has to be found out group by group.
Food got a dent in April 2026, when VAT on food was cut from 12 to 6 percent. Food in CPI fell 5.5 percent in a month, almost exactly what the tax cut corresponds to. The cut applies until 2027.
The commodity on the world market against the price in the shop.
The phrase comes from the economist Robert Bacon, who in 1991 showed that British petrol prices rose like rockets when oil got more expensive but fell like feathers when it got cheaper. The pattern has since been found in many markets, but not everywhere. A Swedish study of petrol stations from 2025 found it clearest where local competition was weak.
The chart does not show margins. The commodity is only part of the shop price: a tin of coffee includes roasting, packaging, transport, wages and VAT, and in a litre of petrol taxes are roughly half. That is why the consumer price always moves less than the commodity, both up and down. What can be read from it is the time lag and whether the price follows when the commodity falls. Contracts and stocks mean it often takes months before a commodity price shows on the shelf.
Commodity prices are counted in kronor, so a weaker krona makes them more expensive even when the dollar price stands still.
What research says about why prices rose.
During the inflation years the word greedflation appeared: the idea that companies used inflation as cover to raise prices more than costs. Authorities and researchers have looked into it, and the answers partly point in different directions. They also measure different things: the whole economy, one industry or individual goods, profits in kronor or as a share of sales.
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Did food prices rise more than costs?
The Swedish Competition Authority reviewed the food chain on a government assignment and found weaknesses in competition at several stages: high concentration in retail and in parts of the industry, lock-in agreements and barriers to new players. The authority concluded that consumers have paid more for many foods than higher production costs can justify. The price rise peaked in March 2023.
Swedish Competition Authority (2024), The Swedish Competition Authority's review of the food industry 2023–2024, report 2024:5.
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Did retailers seize the chance to raise margins?
Researchers at Lund University and SLU studied meat and milk among other things on behalf of the Swedish Competition Authority. They found no support for grocery retail as a whole raising its margins when prices rose, but did not rule out exceptions for individual products and chains.
Swedish Competition Authority, commissioned research (2024), Rising food prices and changing competition?, 2024:3.
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How profitable were food companies?
The Swedish Competition Authority's follow-up shows that profitability in grocery retail with wholesalers and in the food industry was stable over 15 years, even in the years of record food prices. Retail's operating margin averaged 2.4 percent from 2008 to 2019, rose to 3.9 percent in 2021 and was around 2.5 percent after that. The authority judges that prices could have been lower with stronger competition, especially at the retail stage. Stable margins in percent mean larger profits in kronor when prices rise.
Swedish Competition Authority (2025), Profitability in the food industry, grocery retail and wholesalers, report 2025:3.
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Did profitability fall instead?
Statistics Sweden's business statistics show that the operating margin fell in 2022 and 2023 compared with the average from 2012 to 2021: in the food industry from 3.3 to minus 0.4 percent, in grocery retail from 2.8 to 2.4 percent. Wholesale was somewhat higher, 3.2 percent in 2023 against 2.5 on average.
Statistics Sweden (2024), Weaker profitability in food industries despite higher food prices.
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What drove Swedish inflation?
An analysis from the Riksbank split price increases into import prices, labour costs and profits per unit produced. The rise in domestic inflation after the pandemic at first mainly reflected rising unit profits, and the increase in the profit share was broad, also in industries close to consumers. Labour costs contributed little in 2021 but more in 2022 and 2023. The analysis is the authors' own and not the Riksbank's official position.
Lindskog and Lovéus, Riksbank staff memo (2023), Import prices, labour costs and profits: what role have they played in inflation dynamics?
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How much of the euro area price increase was profits?
ECB economists calculated that unit profits in 2022 accounted for on average two thirds of domestic price growth, against about one third on average from 1999 to 2022. During 2024 it turned: lower profit growth then dampened the effect of rising wages on prices, and unit profits fell early in the year.
Arce, Hahn and Koester, ECB Blog (2023), How tit-for-tat inflation can make everyone poorer; Lane, ECB (2024), Monetary policy and the disinflation process.
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Did companies raise their markups?
IMF economists found that domestic profits accounted for 45 percent and import prices for 40 percent of the rise in euro area consumer prices from early 2022 to early 2023. But they also write that available data do not suggest a broad increase in markups: profits rose because companies passed on higher costs, not necessarily because margins widened.
Hansen, Toscani and Zhou, IMF Working Paper 23/131 (2023), Euro Area Inflation after the Pandemic and Energy Shock: Import Prices, Profits and Wages.
In sum: profits rose in kronor during the inflation years, and in the euro area they carried an unusually large share of the price increase in 2022. Whether that was companies charging more than costs or profits following along as costs were passed on depends on which industry and which measure you look at. For Swedish food, the Swedish Competition Authority points to weak competition rather than rising percentage margins.
When the pack gets smaller but the price stays the same.
Shrinkflation is when a product gets less content for the same price. It does not show on the price tag but in the unit price per kilo or litre. Price statistics do not miss it: Statistics Sweden compares the price per quantity, so a smaller pack at the same price counts as a price increase in CPI.
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How much does shrinkflation affect CPI?
Statistics Sweden's measure is the sum of all adjustments for changed packaging. The effect was noticeable from 2017 to 2019, and in 2017 changed packaging raised the price of coffee by four percent on average. In 2022 the effect was negligible, minus 0.04 percentage points, because packs that grew weighed more than those that shrank.
Statistics Sweden (2023), Food prices are less affected by shrinkflation.
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Is shrinkflation common in Swedish shops?
A study for the Swedish Competition Authority found that shrinkflation occurs in Sweden, but not in all product categories and not repeatedly in the categories where it was found. The study is based on ten years of data up to 2021.
Lange, Swedish Competition Authority commissioned research (2025), Shrinkflation, 2025:1.
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What does it look like in other countries?
In the US, shrunken packs accounted for less than a tenth of a percentage point of the 34.5 percent price increase from 2019 to 2024, but for up to 3 percentage points in the hardest hit categories, such as household paper. In Canada 29.6 percent of the affected foods in CPI shrank from 2021 to 2023. Since July 2024 France requires larger shops to post signs at products that have shrunk without a price cut.
US GAO (2025), GAO-25-107451; Statistics Canada (2025), Shrinkflation in the Consumer Price Index; DGCCRF.
Sweden compared with the rest of Europe.
The EU's harmonised index of consumer prices, HICP, from the 2019 average to the latest month. HICP is calculated the same way in all countries and leaves out owner-occupied housing, so it differs somewhat from CPI. The EU countries plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
Sweden is below the average of the EU and the euro area. The countries of eastern Europe, where food and energy weigh more in household budgets and several currencies weakened, saw the largest increases. Switzerland, with a strong currency and regulated electricity prices, rose the least.
Did wages keep up?
Average monthly wage for all employees in September each year according to Statistics Sweden's wage structure statistics, and CPI as an annual average, both with 2019 = 100. The real wage is the wage divided by the price level.
Wages rose every year, but in 2022 and 2023 prices rose considerably faster. It was the largest fall in real wages in several decades. The Swedish National Mediation Office, using short-term wage statistics, found that real wages by CPI fell 5.6 percent in 2022 and 4.9 percent in 2023. Since 2024 real wages are growing again, but in May 2026 they were according to the Mediation Office still about 0.4 percent below the 2019 level by CPI, and about 0.7 percent above by CPIF.
An average hides large differences. Those with a variable rate mortgage paid more when rates rose, while those renting got rent increases that came later but remain. Low income households spend a larger share of their budget on food and housing, which rose the most.
Work out your own price increase.
The sliders show how an average household splits every hundred kronor according to the CPI weights. Change them to match your own budget.
Simplified calculation: each division is indexed with its own price index since 2019 and weighted with your shares, as if you had bought the same things all along. CPI changes weights every year, so the average household here differs somewhat from CPI. Housing covers rent, electricity, heating, water and, for owners, mortgage interest among other things, as in CPI.
Where the figures come from.
- SCB (CC0): CPI per group of goods and services with weights (COICOP 2018) and CPIF per month from 2019, and average monthly wage from the wage structure statistics.
- Eurostat (CC BY 4.0): HICP per country and exchange rates against the dollar.
- World Bank, Pink Sheet (CC BY 4.0): commodity prices per month in dollars, converted to kronor.
- Nord Pool via the page The electricity price: the spot price in price area 3.
- Swedish National Mediation Office, Swedish Competition Authority, Riksbank, ECB, IMF, Statistics Sweden, GAO and Statistics Canada: cited reports, linked at each finding. The VAT cut: the Riksdag's decision and the government's follow-up from September 2026.
- Not included: prices in individual shops or chains, which exist only in retailers' own databases, and margins per product.