$100 in 1919 is worth $81.50 in 1938,
because prices declined 18.5% over that period, an average of
1.07% a year.
$100 in 1919 has
the same buying power as
$81.50
in 1938
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-18.5%
Average inflation rate
-1.07% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$81.50
Price difference ($100 base)
-$18.50
CPI in 1919
17.3
CPI in 1938
14.1
Inflation in 1919
14.57%
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
$100 in 1919 → 1938
$81.50
$100 in 1938 → 1919
$123
What happened to prices between 1919 and 1938
Between 1919 and 1938, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 14.1.
Cumulatively, prices declined 18.5%, which works out to an average of
-1.07% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1919 bought what
$1.23 buys in 1938: the 1919 dollar
gained 22.7% in purchasing power over
these 19 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 1938 at the same ratio, 0.82: $1,000 becomes
$815, and $10,000 becomes $8,150.
Amount in 1919
Value in 1938
$1.00
$0.82
$5.00
$4.08
$10.00
$8.15
$20.00
$16.30
$50.00
$40.75
$100
$81.50
$500
$408
$1,000
$815
$5,000
$4,075
$10,000
$8,150
$100,000
$81,503
$1,000,000
$815,029
Inflation by spending category, 1919–1938
Every category fell between 1919 and 1938: apparel the most, down 39.5%, and food the least, down 34.9%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1919
spending costs in 1938, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1919 →
All items (CPI-U)
-1.07%
$81.50
Food
-2.24%
$65.05
Apparel
-2.61%
$60.50
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 1938
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 15.61% a year, and fell in the 1930s (2.1% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1919–1938 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
1930–1938
-2.09%
-15.6%
$81.50
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1919
$100 from 1919 had already become $98.84 by
1928, on its way to $81.50 in 1938; 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 1938, prices fell 2.1% and $100 from 1919 had the buying
power of $81.50; the year's average CPI of 14.1 is the level
behind every 1938 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 2.1% in 1938, reversing most of 1937’s
gain and interrupting four straight years of recovery from the Depression’s
trough. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the bottom of the
downturn, which had begun that May, to June 1938, a sharp 13-month
contraction that briefly pushed unemployment back up near 19%. Even in a
year the economy was shrinking again, Congress passed one of the New Deal’s
most lasting reforms. The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed June 25 and
effective that October, established the first federal minimum wage, 25
cents an hour, capped the standard workweek at 44 hours with time-and-a-half
overtime beyond it, and restricted the employment of children in most
industries. The wage floor and hours limits applied only to workers engaged
in interstate commerce at first, but they set a precedent that would expand
in the decades that followed. Consumer prices stood 42.4% above their
1913 level and 17.5% below their 1929 peak, evidence of how
far the recovery still had to go even eight years after the Depression
began. First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1919 to 1938: $100 is worth $81.50 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1919-to-1938/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1919 to 1938. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1919-to-1938/