$100 in 1926 is worth $79.66 in 1938,
because prices declined 20.3% over that period, an average of
1.88% a year.
$100 in 1926 has
the same buying power as
$79.66
in 1938
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-20.3%
Average inflation rate
-1.88% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$79.66
Price difference ($100 base)
-$20.34
CPI in 1926
17.7
CPI in 1938
14.1
Inflation in 1926
1.14%
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
$100 in 1926 → 1938
$79.66
$100 in 1938 → 1926
$126
What happened to prices between 1926 and 1938
Between 1926 and 1938, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.7 to 14.1.
Cumulatively, prices declined 20.3%, which works out to an average of
-1.88% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1926 bought what
$1.26 buys in 1938: the 1926 dollar
gained 25.5% in purchasing power over
these 12 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.1% in 1926, a third straight year of mild inflation
and part of the price stability that defined the middle of the decade.
Florida’s real estate boom, which had peaked the previous year on
speculative buying of undeveloped land, ended abruptly that September when
the Great Miami Hurricane made landfall near the city, killing hundreds and
wrecking the market for land whose value had rested on continued
speculation rather than anything underneath it. In Detroit, Henry Ford moved
his company to a five-day, 40-hour work week without cutting pay, a break
from the standard six-day schedule that other large employers would
gradually adopt over the following decades; Ford argued publicly that
workers with more leisure time would also become better customers for the
cars his factories built. Consumer prices remained low enough by historical
standards that a first-class stamp still cost just 2 cents, the same price
it had held since mid-1919.
Every 1926 amount converts to 1938 at the same ratio, 0.80: $1,000 becomes
$797, and $10,000 becomes $7,966.
Amount in 1926
Value in 1938
$1.00
$0.80
$5.00
$3.98
$10.00
$7.97
$20.00
$15.93
$50.00
$39.83
$100
$79.66
$500
$398
$1,000
$797
$5,000
$3,983
$10,000
$7,966
$100,000
$79,661
$1,000,000
$796,610
Inflation by spending category, 1926–1938
Every category fell between 1926 and 1938: food the most, down 28.8%, and apparel the least, down 15.4%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1926
spending costs in 1938, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1926 →
All items (CPI-U)
-1.88%
$79.66
Apparel
-1.39%
$84.56
Food
-2.79%
$71.18
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1926: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1926 to 1938
Prices fell throughout this span: most slowly in the 1920s (1.4% a year) and fastest in the 1930s (2.1% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1926–1938 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1926, at end
1926–1930
-1.44%
-5.6%
$94.35
1930–1938
-2.09%
-15.6%
$79.66
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1926
$100 from 1926 had already become $77.40 by
1932, on its way to $79.66 in 1938; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.6% in 1937, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1938, prices fell 2.1% and $100 from 1926 had the buying
power of $79.66; 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 1926 to 1938: $100 is worth $79.66 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1938/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1926 to 1938. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1938/