Between 1918 and 2022, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.1 to 292.655.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1838.1%, which works out to an average of
2.89% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1918 bought what
$0.05 buys in 2022.
1918 brought the steepest annual price increase the CPI had recorded:
consumer prices rose 18.0% for the year, edging out 1917’s already sharp
17.4% as the economy stayed at full wartime mobilization for most of the
year. A first-class stamp cost 3 cents, up from 2 cents the previous
November under the War Revenue Act’s wartime tax increases. The war itself
ended on November 11, when Germany signed an armistice with the Allied
powers after more than four years of fighting in Europe, but the inflation
built up over a year and a half of mobilization did not disappear along with
the fighting. The bigger public health story that year was the influenza
pandemic that reached the U.S. in a mild spring wave and then returned that
fall in a far deadlier form, eventually killing roughly 675,000 Americans,
more than the country’s combat losses in the war. It hit factories, docks,
and shops alongside households, adding disruption to an economy already
strained by wartime demand. Prices would keep climbing even after the
armistice, into the postwar surge of 1919.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1918 spending costs in 2022, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1918 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.89%
$1,938
Food
2.83%
$1,829
Apparel
1.49%
$465
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1918: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Long periods are sampled every 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2022
2022 was the year inflation returned. Consumer prices rose 8.0% on average,
the worst since 1981, driven by pandemic-era supply chains, stimulus-fueled
demand, and an energy shock from the war in Ukraine. Gas briefly topped $5 a
gallon nationally for the first time ever, and “inflation” became the
top-ranked economic concern in nearly every poll of American households.
MLA: “Inflation from 1918 to 2022: $100 is worth $1,938 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1918-to-2022/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1918 to 2022. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1918-to-2022/