$100 in 1929 is worth $82.46 in 1938,
because prices declined 17.5% over that period, an average of
2.12% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$82.46
in 1938
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-17.5%
Average inflation rate
-2.12% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$82.46
Price difference ($100 base)
-$17.54
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1938
14.1
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
$100 in 1929 → 1938
$82.46
$100 in 1938 → 1929
$121
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1938
Between 1929 and 1938, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 14.1.
Cumulatively, prices declined 17.5%, which works out to an average of
-2.12% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$1.21 buys in 1938: the 1929 dollar
gained 21.3% in purchasing power over
these 9 years.
Consumer prices were unchanged in 1929, the CPI’s annual average flat for
the second time in six years and a fitting close to a decade that began with
wartime inflation and ended in rough price stability. By year’s end the
index stood 14.5% below its 1920 peak and roughly 73% above its
1913 starting point, a reminder that even a “stable” decade
left prices well above where they had started. The stability in the cost of
living masked what was building in financial markets. The National Bureau
of Economic Research dates the start of the Great Depression to that
August, the month the business cycle peaked, months before most Americans
noticed anything was wrong. The break came that October: panic selling hit
Wall Street on Black Thursday, October 24, and returned even worse on Black
Tuesday, October 29, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 12% in
a single session. Billions of dollars in paper wealth disappeared within
days, and the crash marked the start of a downturn that would pull consumer
prices into their steepest sustained decline of the 20th century over the
next four years. First-class postage was still 2 cents, a price that would
hold until 1932.
Every 1929 amount converts to 1938 at the same ratio, 0.82: $1,000 becomes
$825, and $10,000 becomes $8,246.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1938
$1.00
$0.82
$5.00
$4.12
$10.00
$8.25
$20.00
$16.49
$50.00
$41.23
$100
$82.46
$500
$412
$1,000
$825
$5,000
$4,123
$10,000
$8,246
$100,000
$82,456
$1,000,000
$824,561
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1938
Every category fell between 1929 and 1938: food the most, down 26.7%, and apparel the least, down 11.3%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1938, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
-2.12%
$82.46
Apparel
-1.33%
$88.66
Food
-3.39%
$73.33
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1929: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1929 to 1938
Prices fell throughout this span: most slowly in the 1930s (2.1% a year) and fastest in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1938 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1929, at end
1929–1930
-2.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1938
-2.09%
-15.6%
$82.46
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $76.02 by
1933, on its way to $82.46 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 1929 had the buying
power of $82.46; 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 1929 to 1938: $100 is worth $82.46 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1938/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1938. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1938/