If you think your grocery list cost you more in January than in December, you were right! Indeed, the price for the FOX Business Shopping Cart, a 32-item grocery basket based on information collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose 48 cents from December to January to $73.72. The basket costs $4.32 more than it did in January 2007.

Prices, not surprisingly, are rising faster than earnings. Average hourly earnings, as reported by BLS, in January were 4 cents higher than in December and 63 cents higher than in January 2007. That means it took the average worker a little more than four hours (four hours and nine minutes to be precise) to earn (before taxes) the cost of a typical shopping cart. That was one minute longer than in December and six minutes longer than in January 2007.

The FOX Business Shopping Cart includes basic food items -- milk, butter, eggs, bread, meat, fruit and vegetables -- as well as fun foods such as potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, soda, beer and ice cream. Granted, everyone’s shopping cart is different. A vegan will skip the USDA Choice boneless round roast, while a pound of spaghetti won’t last a week for a family of carb-loaders. But, all told, it is a good list to use to track changes in the price you pay as you roll down the aisles of your local supermarket. The prices, by the way, are tracked by BLS as part of the monthly consumer price index report.

FOX Business will track the prices of items in the Shopping Cart each month and compare the month-to-month change with the change in average hourly earnings. This way, you not only know how much the cost of your groceries is rising or falling, but also how much of your workweek is spent making the money to afford it.

The price for the total FOX Business Shopping Cart rose 0.7% from December to January -- the sharpest increase since last summer -- while average hourly earnings went up 0.2%. For the year from January 2007 to January 2008, the price for the shopping basket rose 6.2% while average hourly earnings went up 3.7%.

From December to January, prices rose for 21 of the 32 items in the FOX Business Shopping Cart, led by a sharp month-over-month increase in the price of spaghetti: up 16 cents per pound, or about 20%. Prices also rose significantly for butter and cheese (in dollars) and, by percentage, beer. The steepest price drops from December were for potato chips and tomatoes (each down almost 12 cents a pound) and chocolate chip cookies.

For the year, prices increased for all but five items in the FOX Business Shopping Cart, led by an 80-cent, or 26%, increase in the price of a gallon of milk. (Though not in the FBN Shopping Cart, the price of a gallon of regular gasoline also increased by 80 cents a gallon from January 2007 to January 2008.) The price of a dozen eggs saw the greatest percentage jump in the year, 40.4%, almost 63 cents. The five items for which prices dropped in the year were ham, grapefruit, round roast, broccoli – and chocolate chip cookies.

Here’s a list of the components that make up the FOX Business Shopping Cart:

Ham
Pork Chops
American processed cheese
Red Delicious apples
Sliced Bacon
Bananas
Boneless stew beef
Bologna
White bread
Broccoli
Butter
Whole chicken
Ground roast coffee
Soda
Chocolate chip cookies
A dozen eggs
White flour
Grapefruit
Ground chuck
Ice cream
Malt beverage
Whole milk
Frozen concentrate orange juice
Creamy peanut butter
Potato chips
White potatoes
Boneless round roast
Spaghetti
Sirloin steak
White sugar
Tomatoes
Iceberg lettuce

 [FOX News Intern Adam Samson contributed to this report.]

Mark Lieberman is the senior economist for the Fox Business Network. Prior to joining FOX, he served as first vice president at Washington Mutual, where he was manager of economic analysis and research. Before that, he served as senior vice president at Dime Savings Bank of New York (which was later acquired by Washington Mutual), where he specialized in credit and risk management. He has a degree in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.