$100 in 1919 is worth $138 in 1949,
because prices increased 37.6% over that period, an average of
1.07% a year.
$100 in 1919 has
the same buying power as
$138
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
37.6%
Average inflation rate
1.07% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$138
Price difference ($100 base)
$37.57
CPI in 1919
17.3
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1919
14.57%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1919 → 1949
$138
$100 in 1949 → 1919
$72.69
What happened to prices between 1919 and 1949
Between 1919 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 37.6%, which works out to an average of
1.07% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1919 bought what
$0.73 buys in 1949: the 1919 dollar
lost 27.3% of its purchasing power over
these 30 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 1949 at the same ratio, 1.38: $1,000 becomes
$1,376, and $10,000 becomes $13,757.
Amount in 1919
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.38
$5.00
$6.88
$10.00
$13.76
$20.00
$27.51
$50.00
$68.79
$100
$138
$500
$688
$1,000
$1,376
$5,000
$6,879
$10,000
$13,757
$100,000
$137,572
$1,000,000
$1,375,723
Inflation by spending category, 1919–1949
Between 1919 and 1949, food rose the most, up 34.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 12.7%, against 37.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1919
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1919 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.07%
$138
Food
0.99%
$134
Apparel
0.40%
$113
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 1949
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 1919–1949 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
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$80.92
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$138
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1919
$100 from 1919 had already become $77.46 by
1934, on its way to $138 in 1949; 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 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1919 had the buying
power of $138; the year's average CPI of 23.8 is the level
behind every 1949 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1919 to 1949: $100 is worth $138 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1919-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1919 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1919-to-1949/