$100 in 1919 is worth $96.53 in 1930,
because prices declined 3.5% over that period, an average of
0.32% a year.
$100 in 1919 has
the same buying power as
$96.53
in 1930
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-3.5%
Average inflation rate
-0.32% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$96.53
Price difference ($100 base)
-$3.47
CPI in 1919
17.3
CPI in 1930
16.7
Inflation in 1919
14.57%
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
$100 in 1919 → 1930
$96.53
$100 in 1930 → 1919
$104
What happened to prices between 1919 and 1930
Between 1919 and 1930, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 16.7.
Cumulatively, prices declined 3.5%, which works out to an average of
-0.32% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1919 bought what
$1.04 buys in 1930: the 1919 dollar
gained 3.6% in purchasing power over
these 11 years.
The fighting in Europe ended in November 1918, but American prices kept
climbing through 1919 almost as fast as they had during the war itself,
rising 14.6% for the year. Wartime price and production controls were being
dismantled, millions of soldiers were returning to the civilian labor
market, and demand that had been held back for years ran into supply that
had not caught up, a combination that kept the cost of living rising even
with the guns silent. Workers, whose pay had fallen behind three straight
years of double-digit inflation, pushed back: a general strike shut down
Seattle in February, Boston’s police force walked out in September, and a
nationwide steel strike that same month drew in roughly 350,000 workers and
ran into the following January. One price did fall that year: first-class
postage reverted to 2 cents on July 1, ending the wartime 3-cent rate that
had funded part of the war effort since late 1917. By year’s end, prices had
risen close to 75% since the CPI’s 1913 starting point,
compressing more than a decade of typical peacetime inflation into six years
of war and its aftermath.
Every 1919 amount converts to 1930 at the same ratio, 0.97: $1,000 becomes
$965, and $10,000 becomes $9,653.
Amount in 1919
Value in 1930
$1.00
$0.97
$5.00
$4.83
$10.00
$9.65
$20.00
$19.31
$50.00
$48.27
$100
$96.53
$500
$483
$1,000
$965
$5,000
$4,827
$10,000
$9,653
$100,000
$96,532
$1,000,000
$965,318
Inflation by spending category, 1919–1930
Every category fell between 1919 and 1930: apparel the most, down 33.1%, and food the least, down 16.1%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1919
spending costs in 1930, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1919 →
All items (CPI-U)
-0.32%
$96.53
Food
-1.59%
$83.87
Apparel
-3.59%
$66.85
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1919: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1919 to 1930
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 15.61% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1919–1930 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1919, at end
1919–1920
15.61%
15.6%
$116
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$96.53
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1919
$100 from 1919 had already become $98.84 by
1924, on its way to $96.53 in 1930; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 15.6% in 1920, and prices fell 10.5% in 1921, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1930, prices fell 2.3% and $100 from 1919 had the buying
power of $96.53; the year's average CPI of 16.7 is the level
behind every 1930 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 2.3% in 1930, a mild decline compared with what was
coming but the first sign that the summer 1929 downturn was not going to be
short. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates that contraction from
August 1929, and by the time it finally bottomed out in March 1933 it would
run 43 months, the longest of any downturn in the NBER’s chronology back to
1854. Congress made the trade picture worse in June, when President Hoover
signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising duties on more than 20,000
imported goods to some of the highest levels in a century. Trading partners
retaliated with tariffs of their own, and global trade volumes collapsed
over the next several years, deepening a downturn economists still debate
how much the tariff itself worsened. The financial system cracked that fall:
a regional banking panic culminated in the December 11 failure of the Bank
of United States in New York, at the time the largest bank failure in
American history, wiping out more than $200 million in deposits. It was the
first of four banking panics that would hit the country before 1933 was
out. Consumer prices still stood 68.7% above their 1913
starting point, but the direction had clearly turned. First-class postage
held at 2 cents, unchanged for eleven straight years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1919 to 1930: $100 is worth $96.53 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1919-to-1930/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1919 to 1930. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1919-to-1930/