US beauty price changes since 2019: cosmetics, services and overall inflation

The same-month comparison

The table puts each series on a common August 2019 baseline of 100. A value of 106.8 means the index is 6.8% above that baseline; it does not mean an average product costs $106.80. Every row uses August, rather than mixing annual averages with a partial year.

HomeWise rebasing of BLS cosmetics, personal-care services and all-items data. Categories are defined below. Values rounded to one decimal.

August year	Cosmetics category (Aug 2019=100)	Personal-care services (Aug 2019=100)	All items (Aug 2019=100)
2019	100.0	100.0	100.0
2020	97.3	104.8	101.3
2021	97.0	110.8	106.6
2022	101.0	115.7	115.4
2023	103.7	121.6	119.7
2024	103.6	127.3	122.7
2025	103.9	132.0	126.3
2026	106.8	137.6	130.6

The comparison shows the different paths of consumer goods and services. By August 2026, the cosmetics category was 6.8% above its August 2019 level, while personal-care services were 37.6% above theirs. The all-items index was 30.6% higher. None of these categories represents the cost of an equivalent substitute for another.

What the categories include

The BLS cosmetics category is cosmetics, perfume, bath, nail preparations and implements. It is broader than makeup alone. The service category is haircuts and other personal care services. It is broader than a haircut at a particular salon. We use the full labels in quotable findings because narrowing them would change the claim.

The all-items index represents the wider consumer basket. All three series cover the U.S. city average for all urban consumers (CPI-U) and use not-seasonally-adjusted observations. They do not identify the experience of an individual household, brand, salon or demographic group. The source does not support a separate estimate for women, older consumers or Black consumers.

Price increases and relative changes

Cosmetics-category prices increased over the seven-year period. They rose more slowly than the all-items index. The category-to-all-items index ratio fell 18.2%; that relative decline does not mean cosmetics became 18.2% cheaper in dollars, or that their affordability improved relative to wages. Income was not part of this analysis.

The most recent same-month annual comparison in this snapshot, August 2025 to August 2026, is 2.8% for cosmetics, 4.2% for personal-care services and 3.4% for all items. These one-decimal results agree with BLS’s August 2026 release table as retrieved on October 14, 2026. That release URL changes as new results are published; the downloadable data here retain this snapshot.

The comparison describes what happened to the indexes. It does not establish a cause, measure the effect of tariffs or show how much consumers bought. It also does not establish why a particular service price changed.

Methodology

HomeWise Review compiled and calculated this reference from public BLS data. BLS collected the underlying price observations. HomeWise did not conduct a survey, buy or test products, or measure salon bills.

We retrieved these three BLS series on October 14, 2026:

• CUUR0000SEGB02: cosmetics, perfume, bath, nail preparations and implements; original base 1982–84 = 100.
• CUUR0000SEGC01: haircuts and other personal care services; original base December 1997 = 100.
• CUUR0000SA0: all items; original base 1982–84 = 100.

The raw responses covered January 2019 through August 2026. We selected August 2019 through August 2026 because August was the latest common month in the captured responses, and matching August 2019 provides a pre-pandemic baseline. This is a dated historical snapshot, not a claim that 2026 is a completed year or that no newer release exists when you read it.

We preserved all 85 intervening calendar months for each of the three series. The data contain 255 rows: 252 numeric observations and three explicitly missing observations. October 2025 is unavailable in all three series, with the BLS footnote identifying a lapse in appropriations. Missing cells are empty in CSV and null in JSON. We did not substitute zero, interpolate or carry a previous month’s value forward. We did not calculate a complete-year average for 2025 or 2026.

The calculations use original unrounded index inputs:

1. Common baseline: 100 × index in the selected month ÷ index in August 2019.
2. Percentage change: 100 × (end index ÷ start index − 1).
3. Relative index change: 100 × [(category end ÷ category start) ÷ (all-items end ÷ all-items start) − 1].

Displayed changes and table values are rounded to one decimal. Downloaded rebased values retain six decimals. Relative index change is different from subtracting two percentage changes: the result is a percentage change in their ratio, not a percentage-point gap.

We used unadjusted series consistently. Comparing the same month in different years avoids mixing seasonal months, but does not eliminate every measurement limitation. We do not interpret month-to-month movements as seasonally adjusted trends. The categories have different original index bases, so the unrebased index levels should not be compared as if they were prices.

An independent arithmetic implementation checked every retained observation and calculated value. We also checked the annual changes against the separately published BLS release and the cosmetics observations against BLS data reproduced by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. These checks do not turn an index into a household budget or establish causation.

Sources

• BLS cosmetics-category data.
• BLS haircuts and other personal-care services data.
• BLS all-items CPI-U data.
• BLS category publication hierarchy.
• BLS CPI questions, definitions and limitations.
• BLS August 2026 CPI-U release table, checked as of October 14, 2026.
• BLS cosmetics data reproduced by FRED.

Download the research data

Download monthly CSV · Download monthly JSON

Both files contain the same original index observations, exact BLS series names and IDs, index bases, source identifiers, missing-data footnotes and HomeWise rebased values. The methodology above supplies the formulas needed to reproduce the comparison. Source data and HomeWise calculations are labelled separately.

BLS states that its published material is public domain, except for previously copyrighted photographs and illustrations. These downloads contain numerical data and calculations, not those images or BLS trademarks. You may reuse the HomeWise comparison and calculations; credit BLS for the source data and HomeWise Review for the analysis. A backlink or permission request is not a condition of access or reuse.

For related subject guides, see the HomeWise Beauty directory. This report measures historical price movement rather than recommending a particular product or routine.