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The cost of those "12 days of Christmas" has gone up 3% since last year, according to the "Christmas Price Index" calculated annually by PNC Wealth Management and reported in today's New York Times.
Quoting:
The 12 gifts would cost a total of $18,920.59, up 3.1 percent from last year. That is less than the 6.1 percent rise chalked up last year over 2004, though, when the threat of avian flu kicked fowl prices up.
Since the index started in 1984, PNC has found that prices for goods generally have fallen while prices for services have soared — for example, the cost of the performing ladies and lords has gone up 300 percent in 22 years. The only labor bargain this year was the eight maids a-milking, who earned the federal minimum wage of $5.15 hourly, which has not risen in nearly a decade.
Low unemployment rates helped push the cost of the nine dancing ladies to $4,759, up 4 percent over last year, according to Philadanco, a modern dance company in Philadelphia.
The cost of engaging ballet dancers to leap like lords rose 3 percent, and the bill for the drummers and other entertainers went up 3.4 percent compared with 2005, according to a Pennsylvania musicians’ union.
For those hedge fund managers looking for a show stopper, giving the gifts repeatedly as listed in the song for the full 12 days of Christmas (a partridge in a pear tree each day, for instance, and five gold rings from Days 5 through 12), results in 364 items with a price tag of $75,122, up 3.5 percent from last year’s $72,608.
While surely a time saver, shopping online for the shippable items increased the price to $125,767 because of shipping costs, up from last year’s $123,846.
