One-cent coins are expected to stop entering circulation early next year. Businesses will need to round prices up or down
When I was teaching, I used the book The Economics of Macro Issues as a supplemental text. It had a chapter related to this. Even several years ago it was costing more than one cent to produce a penny and more than five cents to produce a nickel.
Excerpts:
"The U.S. Mint, which is the Treasury’s in-house coin producer, projects an annual savings of $56 million in reduced material costs. The penny, though worth only a cent, costs nearly 4 cents to make. The Treasury said it expects savings to grow once it stops using some of the production facilities.
The Mint will stop making pennies after it runs out of the blank templates used to make them. The final order of blanks was placed this month, according to the statement."
"Americans will still be able to use pennies in cash transactions after production stops."
"the U.S. government lost more than $85 million last year on the roughly three billion pennies it produced."
"Americans throw away up to $68 million in coins a year. They are left in plastic bins at airport security checkpoints and even used in art and home decor."
"Some 60% of actively circulating coins, or as much as $14 billion, sit in coin jars"
"Canada . . . stopped producing the coin in 2012 and eventually started to round cash transactions to the nearest 5 cents. Australia and New Zealand stopped producing one-cent pieces decades ago."
Related post:
What Trump’s Plan to Stop Minting Pennies Means for Consumers (2025)
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