Oddly, around Portland, Oregon we never had pricing issues when ammo did come in at places like Walmart or Bi-Mart. They limited supply and it was hard to come by but they never jacked up their prices.
The pawn shops, some gun shops, and vendors at the gun shows were the ones jacking up pricing on new 22lr, reselling the ammo from retail stores, or old personal inventory from before the shortage.
Patience paid off for me over the shortage time-frame, buying one or two boxes of 50 per week or two, the rare 100rnd CCI stick, and the occasional brick at normal pricing. I managed to buy thousands of rounds during that period in the $0.04/rd range, or less.
Pricing is still good, inventories improving, limits have been lifted here now and we are starting to see more variety (seemed like Federal and CCI were the only ones making 22lr ammo). The only thing that would say we’re back to normal is if the .22 starts being placed out on open shelving and not kept strictly behind the counter.
Federal and CCI are owned by the same company, Vista Outdoors.
They are the big players in the ammo market.
You also have Winchester and Remington, with Aguila (Mexico) aggressively looking to capture more of the U.S. market.