The US economy has a ‘dinner sausage’ problem

As the old saying goes, you never want to know how the sausage gets made.

But according to one food manufacturer in the state of Texas, you always want to know how much dinner sausage gets sold.

Dinner sausage consumption grew modestly, according to one comment in the Dallas Fed’s Texas Manufacturing Outlook survey, adding that demand tends to “grow when the economy weakens, as sausage is a good protein substitute for higher-priced proteins and can ‘stretch’ consumers’ food budgets.” 

We have seen this happening before: As beef prices soared, chicken became the more favorable and affordable option. Everyday Americans continue to feel the pinch of high prices, even if the deceleration in inflation means they’re rising more slowly.

As another manufacturing executive put it: "we are preparing for the recession."

A caveat is needed: respondents to the Dallas Fed’s economic surveys have a long history of hyperbole and a distinct partisan slant. Most notably, corporate leaders were in uproar over millennial laziness ruining their businesses back in 2016.

Americans spend billions of dollars on sausages. According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, dinner sausage sales in 2023 were nearly 1.2 billion pounds, and consumers spent more than $5.3 billion dollars on it. That’s more than sales for breakfast sausage and hot dogs. 

A point in favor of the Texan food manufacturer’s remark: the amount of sausages sold was higher in 2020 than it was last year, with 1.27 billion pounds of dinner sausage unloaded during the onset of the pandemic. That totaled more than $4.8 billion dollars spent, the council’s data showed. That’s a 14.9% increase from 2019. Consumption slightly declined in the few years that followed.