DENVER (KDVR) — This one hurts.

With inflation still running rampant across a fiscally exhausted U.S., there are few breaks to catch. There is some small reprieve as rents and housing prices have ceased their upward march early in 2023, but the pandemic has still raised costs of living across the board faster in the last two years than at any point in the last 40 years.

McDonald’s famed Big Mac isn’t immune.

Global financial magazine The Economist has analyzed worldwide Big Mac prices since 1986 as a gauge for consumer buying power. This year has seen the iconic double-pattie bite of Americana rise in price faster than any of the last 10 years.

The average price of a Big Mac in the United States was $5.36 as of December 2022, the highest it’s ever been. In 2000, the burger cost less than half the current price – $2.24.

Between December 2021 and December 2022, the Big Mac rose 6.35% in price. The last time it jumped that much in price was 2011 during the height of the Great Recession’s economic disturbances.

Coloradans pay one of the highest amounts for one of the revered sandwiches.

A Big Mac cost $4.59 in Colorado, according to a state-by-state analysis of menu prices by CashNetUSA. It’s the 13th-highest in the nation and the highest in the interior U.S.

Blessedly, Coloradans don’t have to pay the $5.31 Hawaiians pay, the nation’s highest. Fast food lovers in New York, New Jersey, California and Maryland also have to pay above $5.

In Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and South Dakota, however, the Big Mac still costs under $4.